Introduction and Natasha Parker's Background

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 168

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin, and I'm very happy to have you with us today. And, and today we have with us a very special guest that I'm very excited to have. Her name is Natasha Parker. Natasha, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Natasha Parker [00:00:35] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] Now, Natasha, you might be known to some of my listeners as the founder and chief blogger at the blog, Mormon Therapist. Is that right?

Natasha Parker [00:00:52] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] And tell us your. Your blog address real quick.

Natasha Parker [00:00:56] It's mormontherapist.blogspot.com.

John Dehlin [00:01:00] that's right. And. And Natasha, you've. You've been blogging for quite some time. How much time have you been blogging?

Natasha Parker [00:01:09] I believe over two years.

John Dehlin [00:01:11] Yeah, a couple years.

Natasha Parker [00:01:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:13] And I've pretty much been following you ever since you. You came out with your blog, and that's cool. Yeah, yeah. And you do great. You do great work, so thank you. And also you. You blog for Mormon Matters, is that right?

Natasha Parker [00:01:28] Yes, I do a weekly article for them.

John Dehlin [00:01:31] Mormon matters.org and I've really enjoyed your post there as well. And I have to admit that I really enjoyed your episode. You did one episode with Mormon expression, right?

Natasha Parker [00:01:42] That's right, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] And that was fantastic.

Natasha Parker [00:01:44] So just a few months ago.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] Yep. So I just let me go ahead and set up for our listeners a little bit of context, if that's okay. I've mentioned to my listeners for some time that I'm pursuing a PhD in clinical psychology, and I'm very interested in mental health generally and specifically mental health within Mormonism and within the LDS Church and within its broader culture. So I've been. I stated as a primary goal for 2010 to begin an exploration of mental health and Mormonism, but I thought, you know, since I'm only a year into my graduate work, that I didn't want to do it alone and could probably be a lot more effective to partner with somebody. So, Natasha, you're the first person I really approached about it because you're the first person I thought of as being a fantastic partner. So.

Natasha Parker [00:02:43] Well, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] Yeah. So you're welcome. So I guess I'll just tell my listeners that what I hope to do is begin sort of a bit of a collaboration with Natasha to have her come on and with some regularity, let's say, once a month or even more frequently, depending on how things go and how much Natasha Likes it. Have Natasha, you know, produce at least one episode a month, if not more, surrounding various topics around mental health and Mormonism. And so that's the idea. And I thought that the best way to sort of kick that off would be to bring you on and learn a little bit about your story and just to talk about mental health generally within Mormonism. How does that sound?

Natasha Parker [00:03:31] That sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] Good. So with that, I would like to begin and just have you tell us a little bit about your background, who you are, maybe a little bit about what got you into therapy. Start there.

Natasha Parker [00:03:50] Okay. Well, I started out at BYU as a business major, believe it or not, and decided I really didn't like that, was not a numbers girl. Even though I'm quite analytical, I didn't do well with numbers. So then I was kind of lost and just not sure what to do next. But I did take a Psych 101 class, just kind of as an elective, and just fell in love with it. And I don't remember the name of the professor. She was actually non LDS and quite young. She had just gotten her PhD and I think this was her first teaching assignment. And just a fascinating woman. She was married to a member who also taught at byu, I think in the English department, if I remember, and I wish I could remember her name. She was very influential, I believe, in my career choice and just was very open about many different aspects of mental health. I also took a woman's studies class from her later on. She did not have a great experience at byu, I think because she was not LDS and would often speak to us in her classes about some of the experiences that she was having, which really surprised me, of course, because I thought we were all wonderful Mormons. And some of the experiences that she had that were really quite discriminatory were quite shocking to me, both from faculty and students. So that started me thinking a lot about Mormonism and of course, how we respond to things, especially when things are different from us. And why this woman that I thought was fantastic was having such a difficult time. And I do not believe they stayed on for many years after that. I think they moved away as a couple and taught at some other university, if I remember correctly. Anyway, that started my journey with psychology. And then I graduated from BYU with

John Dehlin [00:05:47] a bachelor's in psychology.

Natasha Parker [00:05:48] With a bachelor's in psychology and got married about a year later and moved to Wichita, Kansas, and kind of decided to look around at what happened there. I knew I wanted to get my master's degree. I knew I wanted to do therapy work. And I knew I couldn't do that without at least a master's degree. Several programs there, one in clinical psychology, and I forget one other one, but one in marriage and family therapy. And I had never really heard about that profession as an, kind of, as a specialty of its own before and was very intrigued and just ended up being a perfect fit for me. Loved it. And it was interesting when we went in there, I think the first class, you know, they, the very first thing they said is, you know, you just want to be very aware of why you're in here and why you're becoming a therapist. I've been thinking about that ever since and that most of us, you know, that go into therapy, work, have, you know, our own issues with our own families or our own friends and our own lives, and we're interested in figuring those things out. And that's what kind of leads us to the profession. So I very much appreciated, I guess, a lot of self therapy through that program.

Gender Roles and Career Path in the Church

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Sure. Let me ask you a quick question. And this is going to seem out of left field a little bit, but, you know, I guess within the church there sometimes are these traditional gender roles and the husband works and the mom stays home. And I know in the 21st century, for many people, that's just not the reality. And there's lots of dual income families, but let's just assume that there's some, you know, traditional LDS church members who have traditional beliefs about gender roles. How did you decide that having a bit of a career was right for you? And how did you muster the strength or the courage or the determination or whatever it is to break out of that traditional gender role from being a mommy and having a job on the side? Is that just something that came from you, from your parents, or just came from inside you or what?

Natasha Parker [00:07:57] Well, it's a really good question and gosh, I could talk about that for three hours. In of itself, I'll be very honest. It's been something I've struggled with all along and have had very different thoughts about that all along. Even now, I struggle with that issue. My family is highly educated. My mom has a PhD. They're very much into education. So that was never a struggle to go get my education. That was just an expectation. I think that where I started to struggle was how much would I be working and when to start a family. So I'll be very upfront that we waited. My husband and I waited quite a while to have kids. I mean, we got married and we had our first Child four years later. And I struggle with the many differing messages that the church gives. One message is start a family right away. Another message is be self sufficient. And for me, the self sufficient won out. I was always, for one reason or another, concerned that, you know, what if something happens to my husband? What if we get divorced? What if he dies? What if in the heck am I going to do? And so I was not comfortable having children without having some type of backup plan that I could fall back on myself. So that was a big part of it. And I also thought too that in order to be a good mom, part of that is to be well rounded and have a lot of different things that I can offer to my kids. And part of that is as an education. Now, since having children, I have worked, but I have worked very part time, like three to four, five hours a week even. I'm working a little bit more now that my kids are at school age. So that's something I've continued to struggle with. Another aspect that was unique to my profession is that my master's degree was two years, but I also needed after that two years of full time work to get any license in any state in the United States. And so I knew I did not want to work full time at that point and have children. So I chose to get that licensure stuff out of the way before we started our family. I've never regretted that decision and I'm very happy. And I don't think it's affected the number of children we've had or anything like that. So, you know, those are decisions that everybody has to make and they're very personal decisions.

John Dehlin [00:10:34] Right. Well, I just wanted to explore that a bit because I know there are some listeners who will have to be making those same type of decisions soon.

Natasha Parker [00:10:43] Yeah, and it's hard because I think it's hard not to feel judged or to not judge others that are not doing it our way or the way that we think is right. And I think there are many different ways of doing it right. And that's up to each couple.

Training, Licensing, and Early Career in Therapy

John Dehlin [00:11:00] And before we jump back into your actual schooling or wherever else you want to take the story, you were able to do your practice part time, is that right?

Natasha Parker [00:11:08] Yes, after I had my license. Now, I would not have been able to do that if I didn't have my license.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] But now that you're licensed, you can do mom part time and work part time, and that works out quite well.

Natasha Parker [00:11:19] Yeah, well, the mom is never part time.

John Dehlin [00:11:22] That's awesome.

Natasha Parker [00:11:26] That's full Time all the way.

John Dehlin [00:11:28] So you have a second shift is what they call it in the academic world.

Natasha Parker [00:11:33] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Okay, well, go ahead and continue. I'm sorry I took you on that diversion.

Natasha Parker [00:11:39] No, that's fine. I'm trying to. Well, so then I went to Friends University in Wichita, Kansas and got my master's degree there. And then I got. Well, then we moved again because my husband wanted to go back to school. So we moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. And there I got my two years of. Like I said that two years that I needed to work full time. I did it at an addiction treatment center in Detroit. So that was very. That was fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] For two years.

Natasha Parker [00:12:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:05] So you've done a lot of addiction work?

Natasha Parker [00:12:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:08] That's great.

Natasha Parker [00:12:11] I'm not an addictions counselor, though some of that has changed now where addiction counseling, you need to have a license specifically in that. So I'm not actually an addictions counselor, but I. I have worked a lot in addictions.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] No. And I imagine that some of that training applies elsewhere.

Natasha Parker [00:12:32] I think the most unique thing about my training that I love is that it was very systems oriented. It was very family centered. And that in a sense, went right along with all of my gospel doctrine and values. And it wasn't when you see even an individual. I was trained to see that individual in the context of their family and of their system that they come out of.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] Yeah, go ahead and talk a little bit about the systems theory because it's really important. We don't emphasize that heavily in clinical psychology, but maybe we should a little bit more but talk about scenarios where maybe the systems paradigm isn't considered and how that backfires and then areas where it is considered and how it really works.

Natasha Parker [00:13:18] In my experience, it's really not considered in the mental health profession. I mean, for instance, I bill insurance, and I can't bill under a family name. I have to bill under an individual. So if a couple comes in to see me and they want to bill their insurance, I need to educate them. Well, first of all, I need to do an assessment and I need to see if there's a diagnosis that one of you may be coming in here with, such as depression or situational depression or adjustment disorder, anxiety, whatever it is, I need to make those assessments and then I have to bill under one of those people. Insurance is not going to cover marital counseling. They will cover family counseling, but again, there has to be an identified client. So it's either a child or a teenager or spouse or somebody. And then you can include the Family. But most therapists that aren't trained systemically usually don't. Or if they do, they do just a session here or there to kind of see what's going on within the family system, but they're not really treating the family system. So, of course, you know, I'm biased because I am a family therapist, and I think that's severely lacking. I think that even if one person is diagnosable, it affects the entire system. If you're living with somebody who's depressed or who has diabetes or who has any type of medical or chronic issue, it's going to affect the entire family. And then everybody else starts dancing around that issue and having issues of their own because of those issues, so.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] Oh, go ahead.

Natasha Parker [00:14:51] No, I just. I love seeing the entire family. I always tell couples, even when they say, well, I want to come in individually, I usually ask the spouse to at least come to the first session because I want to hear the whole story.

John Dehlin [00:15:03] Sure. Talk about. Are you familiar. Do you remember some of the classic stories about when an individual got treated, how it ended up not really solving the overall problem when the system's point of view wasn't taken into consideration? Do you remember any of those at all?

Natasha Parker [00:15:21] Well, there's a lot of research showing that people who have marital issues, specifically marital issues, and go in for individual therapy, there's a much higher rate of divorce because they're going in, you know, to talk about their individual issues. It's very individualized, the process, and they're not really taking the other person into consideration. And so then the road to divorce, I think, is easier. The other thing I remember quite a bit is kids who are like adolescents who get sent off to these kind of, I don't know, schools or kind of inpatient type of places. You know, kids who are really kind of out of control, and so they go away for a month or whatever, and they go and they do great work, you know, in these places, and they really kind of get turned around, but then they get shipped right back to the original system.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] Exactly.

Natasha Parker [00:16:17] And so then all that kind of, you know, goes to waste. Now a lot of those treatment centers are now trying to incorporate more family therapy, but it's very difficult when you have the family living, you know, in Arizona and the treatment centers in Utah, or to really do true family therapy.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] Right, right. Yeah. That's exactly what I was talking about. Unless you can treat someone in the context, sometimes the antecedents and the consequences of their behavior in the context of their living condition and can be such Strong reinforcers that if you're treating them without those things present, you're really not treating them.

Natasha Parker [00:16:52] Right.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] Yeah, that's the behaviorist in me coming out.

Natasha Parker [00:16:55] Yeah, now I have some behaviorism in me too. So I get that.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] Okay, well, cool. So you got your masters, you did some work in addiction and then talk about, you know, your early career and then how you started catering more and more towards Mormons.

Natasha Parker [00:17:19] Right. So this first job I had was in this, you know, addictions treatment center. So I think I ran across one LDS person in that entire two years time just by a fluke as far as a patient. But then after that, like I said, I had my first child and so I really kind of way slowed down and we moved again and we were living in Wisconsin and I got in touch with LDS Family Services and they hired me as a contract therapist. So LDS Family Services actually wasn't even in Wisconsin. The closest office was in Chicago. So I think they were happy that they would have a Mormon therapist up in the Milwaukee area. So I just kind of saw clients through them. You know, they would refer me clients and I would do that a few hours a week.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:18:15] And then I kind of just went on my own after that. I just started my individual practice and started spit because I'm Mormon. Obviously Mormon people know about me, LDS people, you know, the wards. My bishop or my stake president would find out about me. And so that would be kind of a natural referral base. And so ever since then I've been working majorly, I would say 90% with LDS families and couples and individuals.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] You wouldn't, you wouldn't think that, I guess you wouldn't think that your city or your regional area would supply enough LDS people to keep a therapist or part time therapist fully occupied.

Natasha Parker [00:18:56] Well, for instance, when I was in, I mean, that's very interesting. I believe that awards should be able to keep a therapist busy.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] Right. 200 people.

Natasha Parker [00:19:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Yeah.

Natasha Parker [00:19:11] Well, that's not even counting all the inactive people. Right. So that's Right. So I'm always surprised that, you know, I'm working in a. Usually I've worked in a two to three stake area, being the only LDS therapist or maybe one of two, and that I'm not actually swamped. I'm always surprised that I'm not swamped.

John Dehlin [00:19:34] You know, I read a statistic today that at any given point in time, one out of every four adults qualifies for at least one full blown official diagnosis out of the dsm. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Natasha Parker [00:19:52] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Have you heard that type of statistic as well. So if you pick any four adults, one of them has either addiction or. Or depression or anxiety or an eating disorder or some other type of major DSM disorder.

Natasha Parker [00:20:09] Right. Well, and it's interesting that you bring up the DSM, because the DSM 4 also varies quite a bit in severity. I mean, there are some very serious disorders in there. I mean, from schizophrenia to bipolar to manic depression, whatever. But you do have also some very more kind of normal disorders, such as adjustment disorder. So in other words, something has happened in your life, you've moved, or somebody has died, or something kind of stressful and difficult has happened. And you can develop signs of depression or anxiety that are directly related to that, whatever it is you're adjusting to. So that's kind of more of a minimal disorder. It's still diagnosable. Many people have. I mean, it's probably the most common diagnosis given out is an adjustment disorder. And, yeah, many people have those issues. That's kind of just part of normal life, but it's still diagnosable through the DSM IV. I think when we bring up the DSM 4, people get kind of freaked out, like, oh, no, I'm in the DSM 4. I'm a freak. But, you know, all of these things are very part of human life. And we all deal with them at some level or another.

John Dehlin [00:21:20] And just tell our listeners really briefly what the DSM 4 is like and how it's structured.

Natasha Parker [00:21:26] The DSM IV is. What is it? The Diagnostic Statistics Manual. And it's the fourth edition. The fifth one is coming out, I think, shortly within a year or two. Takes about 10 or 15 years for them to revise these things. And it basically just walks through every single mental health diagnosis that we currently are aware of and have done research on. And, you know, statistically validated. And it has all these criteria. So in other words, if you want to diagnose somebody with depression, there's usually a criteria for time. So in other words, how long has this person been having these symptoms? And then it has a whole list of symptoms. And it will say something like, you have to have at least four of the eight symptoms for at least two weeks or something along those lines. Yeah, and it varies. Each diagnosis is different, and it ranges from personality disorders to psychosis to just adjustment disorders to even developmental disorders like autism and learning disorders. I mean, it's all kind of just in there.

John Dehlin [00:22:41] Right. And explain the concept of comorbidity real quick, if you will.

Natasha Parker [00:22:46] Comorbidity is when you have more than one diagnosis at the time. So in other words, it's easy to say, okay, well I'm going to diagnose this person with depression because they're having all of these issues that they actually do qualify for. But if I don't think about, well, is this also like if I don't ask about, you know, are you drinking alcohol, for instance? If I don't ask that question, I'm missing out on possibly a whole different diagnosis because a lot of people who drink alcohol or who are addicted to alcohol can also show similar signs to being depressed. So I can diagnose them as being depressed, but really that's an incorrect diagnosis because I haven't asked about their alcohol addiction. So you have to be very careful about making sure you're taking a very good assessment interview about all their different aspects of their life.

John Dehlin [00:23:37] So do you do a pretty comprehensive assessment when you bring someone in for the first time?

Natasha Parker [00:23:41] I try to.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] Do you use the skid or what do you use?

Natasha Parker [00:23:45] I just, I basically just do a verbal interview. I don't actually use structured. Structured interview. Yeah, I just have questions. I do have it like an individual concern sheet that kind of has a bunch of symptoms that people can check off if they have or not. That kind of can lead me down certain paths.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so let's loop back a bit. You were talking about how you think that each LDS ward with, let's say 250 active members could probably justify its own therapist full time. Support a therapist full time. Were you implying that maybe there's a bit of a stigma or that LDS church members are hesitant to use therapists or too cheap or don't want to. Was there some implication or speculation there or experience there?

Mental Health Culture in the LDS Community

Natasha Parker [00:24:37] Yeah, I think that, I mean, our culture overall is not super therapy friendly. I mean just even American culture, so even out of the Mormon church now that has changed dramatically in the last 40 years or so. People are much more comfortable seeing a therapist or getting mental health help. In the last 20 to 40 years, there's been a huge difference in that. I would say that we as a church as LDS members are probably lagging a little bit in that, I think. And not just Mormons. I live in a very Christian conservative community right now, and I would say Christian conservatives in general because I believe that people really rely on their spiritual lifestyle to help them with these problems, which is great. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean prayer and fasting and going to church and all these things that we do, as part of our lifestyle, do help us lead happier, better lives for the usually for the most part. But they're always not the full equation. They're not usually the only thing that can help us or the only thing that should be helping us. And so then, yeah, I do think that people are like, well, I should, you know, just be able to pray about this. And if I read my scriptures more, if I'm a better member, then this will go away. And when it doesn't go away, then you start falling into the problems of inert shame that there must be something wrong with me if my faith was strong enough, if my, you know, if I was doing things better, it would go away. And therein lies, I think, a huge problem within traditional religion.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] So why is that not, and this is going to sound naive to a lot of people, but why is that naive or improper to think that if you live the gospel fully, you're not going to have mental illness? It may seem obvious, but I'm going to just ask the obvious questions, right?

Natasha Parker [00:26:45] No, well, and I think there's, there's a little bit of play on words there. I mean, when we live the gospel fully, to me that means that we're perfectly living the gospel and if we're perfect, we probably wouldn't have mental problems. So there's probably some truth to that. And I hope that we can all in some other life experience that. And therein lies the problem that we're not living the gospel perfectly. We may be very good members and we may be not, you know, going out doing horrific sins, but we're all struggling in our day to day life and we all struggle with our thoughts and our attitudes and you know, kids and just all kinds of struggles. This is part of this mortal life. And so we're not going to be able to live the gospel completely perfectly at this time of our lives. And so I think all those tools that were given by the, by the church to help us, do help us, but they're not always the complete equation. And this goes back to also people not completely understanding or not looking at it, that mental health is actually very similar to physical health. But we don't always correlate those two. If somebody goes in and breaks their bone, if your kid breaks their bone, you know, by falling out of the tree, you're usually not going to hold a neighborhood fast and sit around and wait for that bone to heal. You're going to rush him to the emergency room and get an X ray done and get proper treatment because we Live in a time when we have that available to us. Now, they didn't always have that available. You know, people didn't always have X rays or. And maybe back in time there were times when all they could do was pray about it and try to ask for help and healing because that's all they had. That's all they had as part of the resources. So it's. I think we need to make that jump with mental health that we have so many resources available to us, from therapy to medicine to. I mean, there's, you know, 50 different types of therapies out there that are all very useful in their own right. And many times we're not using these resources because we think we should just be able to only rely on our spiritual resources. And I think that's just kind of a shame. I think it's changing over time, but I wish it would just be a little faster so we wouldn't have to suffer in silence or suffer with pain that we really otherwise maybe wouldn't need to suffer with.

John Dehlin [00:29:24] Why do you think there's been some hesitance or reluctance in addition to just exclusively relying on the gospel teachings? In your experience, are there any other reasons why LDS people have sometimes been hesitant to seek out a therapist?

Natasha Parker [00:29:43] Well, I think one of the main reasons is are we going to see a therapist who's not LDS and therefore who's not going to espouse correct ideas, you know, or tell us to do things that we're not in agreement with or not understand where we're coming from and there's some validity to that. Although I always say that a well trained ethical therapist, regardless of religion or race or anything, should be able to respect the traditional values and religious context that a couple, family or individual comes in with. I have seen many people from different religions and it's not my job to tell them they're incorrect or that that shouldn't be a part of their life. My job is to use that as a resource for them in their life.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:30:35] So, you know, but there are things, there are certain things that in our culture, you know, kind of sometimes I could see some therapists maybe thinking was unhealthy, like our focus on non. Not masturbating or premarital sex or things like that, where maybe some therapists or homosexuality or Stan. Sexual or homosexuality. Exactly. Or. Or even mixed faith marriages, you know, or when one person loses the faith and not maybe a therapist would have hard time understanding the depth of that for the other spouse. Not that they would minimize it, but they might just not understand the full depth of what that means.

John Dehlin [00:31:17] Right, right, right. And I guess there's also the. I don't know, it feels like at times some church leaders have been a little bit critical of the mental health profession. Maybe in the past.

Natasha Parker [00:31:34] Yes. I haven't completely. I don't remember that.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] Okay.

Natasha Parker [00:31:38] Yeah, I'm young enough.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] No, I think I should have the quote with me. But I think in Mormon doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie called psychiatry, like, psychiatry like a tool of the devil or something to that effect.

Natasha Parker [00:31:51] Sure, yeah. And there have. I mean, those are difficult comments because taken in the cultural context, they make sense. They don't make a lot of sense today. So, you know, you can kind of understand how 50 years ago, some, a church leader would say something like that, whereas, you know, no church leader would say something like that today. So that, you know, therein lies a whole other struggle of where do we draw the line as to what we take to heart as far as what church leaders say? I mean, that's, that's always something that as members, we always have to deal with. But my experience has been that in almost every general conference I've listened to here recently, they will mention something along the lines of, if you need professional help, please feel, you know, like you have the right and the opportunity to. To do that. And we have LDS Family Services who hires therapists who are hired by the church.

John Dehlin [00:32:45] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:32:46] So obviously they didn't no longer have those stances.

John Dehlin [00:32:49] Right, right. Okay, that's great. That's a great intro. Thank you for that. Let's. Let's go ahead and move to. Just say we were going to cover four or five of the biggest issues that you see in your practice that are facing either LDS Church members or Mormons defined more broadly active or inactive. Let's just go ahead and start talking about some of the biggest ones you see and what you think the culture or the faith may or may not contribute to that. If it's, if it's normal, if it's, if it's consistent across all religions, or if it's something in some way unique or peculiar to Mormonism. And then a little bit about how you've helped people work through that and feel free to use as many stories as you feel is appropriate. Of course, protecting people's anonymity. Any stories you can provide to help, you know, give context and color would be great.

The Biggest Issues LDS Clients Bring to Therapy

Natasha Parker [00:33:51] Sure. Well, I guess, gosh, that's.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] It's a big question.

Natasha Parker [00:33:56] Do we have five hours? So I guess there's a lot Of I hate to put them in a list like, of importance, because any issue that anybody's facing is important. As far as themes that seem to come up over and over, I mean, probably the number one would have to do with sexuality. And when I say sexuality, I mean, there's like 20 different topics we could talk about.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] From

Natasha Parker [00:34:27] children that are touching themselves and parents freak out and don't know what to do and start shaming their kids from a very young age to the pressure that we put on our teens to not have premarital sex and to not masturbate and to basically have nothing to do with their sexual selves, to just kind of ignore that whole aspect of themselves to. Then they get married and either they're dealing with guilt because they did have premarital experience and maybe lied about it to get into the temple because that was the cultural pressure to do. They couldn't face their parents and say, you know, I'm not worthy to get married at the temple to then. Or maybe they really, you know, they waited and they did everything right and they did control their sexual urges. And now they're married and they can't turn them back on. So now what do we do? Like, I'm not enjoying sex, not having fun with this. I don't even. I feel dirty. I don't like this part of my life because I've been trying to avoid it for so long. To then just more normal things, which are, you know, you have children and the hormones that come along with that and the stress that comes along with parenting and how that affects our sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:35:46] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:35:47] To then I think, you know, the ideas of, you know, our sex only is it's only meant to have children. So, you know, I don't really particularly want to have sex with you unless we're trying to have kids. You know, those kinds of issues that couple have, couples have that somehow there's something wrong or innately dirty or bad about sex. Then we haven't even talked about singles who don't get married and are expected to be celibate till, you know, there's people in our church who are single in their 30s and 40s, or have never been able to explore that aspect of their lives or never expected not to.

John Dehlin [00:36:24] Right?

Natasha Parker [00:36:24] Or people who have lost a spouse and, you know, have had a great sexual life, and then all of a sudden they have no sexual life and how to make that transition because they're not supposed to, you know, do anything. And then, of course, there's the whole homosexuality realm, and that's A huge, huge aspect that we could speak about that really affects many members of our church and the expectations that are placed on them. And most of the people that I've worked in that realm have desperately tried to follow all the rules, have gone on their missions, have married in the temple. And I think at some level expected this problem to go away. You know, if they did everything right, then it should just, you know, problems go away when you do good things and you're blessed and they go away and they don't. And so then they're with three or four kids and coming out to their spouses, and it's kind of a huge disaster for them and for their spouses and for their families.

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:37:31] So there's. There's a lot of wide range. Yeah, wide range of sexuality issues.

John Dehlin [00:37:37] Well, let me just try and tease a couple of those out and just have a quick talk about a couple of those. I guess we're going to be digging. I hope to be delving in depth on these topics over the coming weeks and months. And so I would like to invite listeners now and in all the topics that Natasha and I discuss to write us if, you know, if they have experience or you know, some type of story to share about these types of issues. We won't be doing therapy on the air at all. We're not interested in that. That's not really ethical or possible. But we do want to find people who are interested in telling their stories and most importantly, how they're able to work through and find some type of greater happiness or health as a result. So this is going to be a framing, one of the many framings for hopefully many future episodes. But I guess I'm interested in teasing out just a few of the items that you mentioned that might be a little bit more unique to Mormonism than maybe other places. And I want to begin just with masturbation. Have you been able to find out from church leaders whether whether masturbation is officially prohibited or not or allowed or verboten or what the status is with masturbation in the church?

Sexuality, Shame, and Masturbation in Mormon Culture

Natasha Parker [00:39:04] I am still on a quest, John, for information.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Have you tried?

Natasha Parker [00:39:11] I have tried, and I've gotten a lot of different responses. That's what's difficult. There's no. There doesn't seem to be one classic thing. I know that there's a bishop's handbook out there, but only bishops get to look at them. And I know it does mention some things in there that were read to me at one point. I didn't memorize it. I Don't think the actual word masturbation was used, but there might have been something along the lines of anything degrading or self.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] Is it self, abuse?

Natasha Parker [00:39:45] Abuse or hurting or, you know, these words that are very kind of vague and that can be interpreted completely different by many people. I mean, this is oral sex, for instance, comes into play here. Is oral sex okay or not? Well, if you think oral sex is demeaning, well, then it falls under that. And many people don't find it demeaning. And so then they think it's fine. And then you have the issues where one spouse thinks it's fine and one spouse doesn't. And there aren't. I think, really, the church hasn't put out, really, a list of, you know, this is okay and this is not okay. I think they just kind of have these vague things. Now. Once you're married, it's a little easier because they do say something along the lines that, you know, as long as both are comfortable and both people are not feeling coerced into doing something, then that's. It's up to the couple. So the couple kind of has a lot of leeway, you know, to kind of figure out their own sex life, which I think is wonderful. I think it's very healthy. And I think that's what couples should be doing, is exploring their sexuality together instead of with their bishop.

John Dehlin [00:40:53] Right. But to make it even more confusing, as I understand it, there was a letter released by the church at some point in the early 80s that actually stated that oral sex was not to be engaged in. And it was retracted, I think, within the year. This is all my foggy memory, but have you heard something to that effect?

Natasha Parker [00:41:13] Yes, I heard about that. It was on my blog for quite a bit. A lot of different people wrote in about that, and a lot of people are pretty knowledgeable about what exactly happened. And I think what my understanding of it was that it was a letter directed towards bishops or stake presidents. It wasn't really a letter directed to the general public kind of as a guidance to them. And then, yeah, very quickly it was retracted. So it was never an official statement that was given out to the entire church.

John Dehlin [00:41:48] But something like that can really penetrate the consciousness of the culture.

Natasha Parker [00:41:52] Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And you could see that 40 years later, we're still, you know, or 30 years later, we're still.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Do you have a position on masturbation as a. As a therapist, or are you able to have one or.

Natasha Parker [00:42:07] Well, I'm trying to develop my position on masturbation. My position on masturbation. And a lot of this has to do, believe it or not, with Elder Packer, who usually tends to be pretty conservative. He wrote something, I believe fairly recently, or it was a talk and probably a priesthood session, I'm assuming, to the young men about understanding. And I wish I had this in front of me, but I believe that he stated that masturbation was a transgression and not a sin. Something along those lines and that try to control yourselves kind of idea. But that this isn't the worst thing ever that you could do.

John Dehlin [00:42:49] Right?

Natasha Parker [00:42:50] Something along those lines. It was only about two sentences long or three, but that kind of helped me understand, I mean, masturbation is something that we are doing in the womb, believe it or not. Now that we can look at our. Well, okay, first of all, let's define masturbation because I do think that there's a difference between masturbation and self stimulation. Self stimulation to me is you're touching your genitals and all kids do this. And that's what I mean by you're doing it in the womb. All kids touch their genital areas at one point or another, boys often more than girls because it's just more readily available. But girls do it too. I believe that when you start getting more closer to puberty and you start having more ability to fantasize or have more ideas, falling in love or erotic thoughts, I mean, those can still happen at a fairly young age. I mean, I remember at age 6, watching Cinderella, thinking this prince was the most amazing thing ever. So, I mean, there was definitely some type of. I don't know if erotic is the right word, but there was that idea that that's what you do is you fall in love. So we have that from a very young age, but I think at puberty or a little bit before puberty, so maybe Starting around age 10 or 11, thoughts can take more of a. More of an eroticized state. And then kids can start to masturbate to the point of orgasm or ejaculation or things like that more readily than they can when they're kids. And then of course, adults can too. So I think my position on masturbation is it's a great tool to teach our kids about their sexuality, but it's not something that we should be shaming our kids about. And so, you know, when sometimes parents pick up on the fact that their kids are masturbating or they want to talk to their kids about masturbation, I think it's a great tool to start Talking about, you know, your body does have some natural urges, your body will respond to touch. It's supposed to do that, that there's nothing wrong with you, that this happens, it happens to everybody. And then start talking more about what sexuality is about and how it's meant to be with, you know, a special partner that you choose someday and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I think these conversations need to begin no sooner than young men and young women. So in other words, if you find your kids masturbating before, then ignore it. But after, you know, they're more of a, of an age of accountability, I guess, you know, 12, 13, 14, that those are the times when you start talking about self control and, you know, what sexuality, what the purpose of sexuality is, but in a non shaming, non detrimental way.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] Yeah.

Natasha Parker [00:46:01] Because a lot of parents, it's still realizing that they're probably still going to do it. I mean, the statistics are that men, I mean, we're like 99% of men do this. And yet I get people all the time that come into my office claiming that they've never done this. So I'm like, okay. And women are, I think, at anywhere between 60 and 75%. The numbers there are more hazy because I think women just don't want to admit to it.

John Dehlin [00:46:24] Okay, okay.

Natasha Parker [00:46:26] And those are not Mormon statistics. Those are kind of general statistics.

John Dehlin [00:46:29] And do you have, do you have any stories of where the shaming or the stigma or the fear maybe about missions or whatever led to some pretty sad or unhealthy results?

Natasha Parker [00:46:45] Well, one thing that I'm noticing, the more clients I have regarding pornography addiction, which is one thing we didn't mention before, but that's coming up more and more now with the Internet becoming so readily available to everybody. And when I go back into their histories and start asking them, you know, so when did you start masturbating or when did you figure out your body was sexual or things? Most of those men, when I focus on men here will start telling me, yeah, you know, I started having wet dreams or I started, you know, thinking, hey, this was fun, or this felt good. You know, probably somewhere around the age of 12 to 13, and right around the time that they're getting their first priesthoods, you know, so they're becoming deacons and such, and they're having their first interviews and usually not completely understanding what some of the words the bishops are using even mean. So a lot of times kids who are 12 or 13, a lot of them know, because in this day and age, kids are Getting great sexual education at school. And I don't mean that. I mean a lot of them are getting great sexual education at school, through the school, but they're also getting a whole other sexual education from their friends, which is usually pretty graphic and pretty, you know, where they use a lot of the slang words and things like that. So by the time that kids hit puberty, they definitely have some idea of their sexuality. But it's usually in very different language than the bishop who's asked them, well, you know, do you masturbate or do you, you know, touch yourself or whatever? And, and it can be very intimidating for a 12 or 13 year old to even admit to those things or to even completely understand am I doing that or am I not? Or, you know, so therein starts, you know, the interviews and therein starts the lies. And my, understand my what I'm. This is not true research. This is just, my experience has been that it's a very similar story that the lying begins very early on in these priesthood interviews because there's no way that they're going to tell their dad's friend or whoever the bishop is that they're doing this. It's very personal, very private, very embarrassing for a young kid to talk about this kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:49:20] And a father won't, a father, a Mormon father won't sit down with the son and say, yep, I masturbated because there's this feeling like I may have done it, but I don't want my son to do it. And I don't want to encourage him or give him the idea. And so the son's going to think that he's the only one. Even though, as you mentioned, 90 to 99% of all the fathers are either doing it or have done it. And there's this weird inability to be candid and honest with the son for fear. But what do you think about that if a father said to you, well, I don't want to give my son the idea, I don't want to make him think about it. And I also don't want to encourage him to do it if he otherwise wouldn't. And so I don't want to talk to him about it because, you know, I don't want to make it happen more, increase the frequency or make him think it's justifiable because I did it. But I think most conscientious Mormon men would feel that way.

Natasha Parker [00:50:18] Yeah, I think you bring up a good point. Although I do know men that are very candid about this with their kids And I do think that that is the healthier approach to be open and honest and candid with our kids. This question is a little far reach. I mean, a lot of people will say the same thing about premarital sex. Well, do I have to tell my kids that I had premarital sex and that, you know, I really regretted it so that then they know that I did that? And I think that there is a level of privacy that a parent can and should have. I don't think that we need to tell our kids every single mistake that we've made or I don't think that that's necessarily appropriate or necessary to be a good teacher. You can say things like, you know, I had similar struggles, you know, I went through similar things, my body responded in similar ways. Everybody's does. So you can have kind of a normalizing approach without necessarily having to spill every single bean of your whole life to your kids. But kids are very astute, very bright, and they pick up on things very easily. So if there's a sense of shame or the idea that we're not talking about it, therefore it won't happen is very problematic because communication actually is what, like 80% nonverbal? Something like that?

John Dehlin [00:51:36] That's right, yeah.

Natasha Parker [00:51:38] So if we have a sense of shame about sex in our homes, kids will pick up on that.

John Dehlin [00:51:44] Yeah. Okay, so you said the lying starts early. Do you see a pattern as it progresses? Were you going to take us through some type of pattern beyond the early lying?

Natasha Parker [00:51:56] Well, I think the pattern that progresses which gets more and more serious and severity is that they begin to lie now to go on their missions, and then they lie to go to the temple. And by this time they're so shame based that it's just kind of part of that whole cycle of shame. And when people are shame based, in other words, they feel so ashamed of themselves. The number one tool that maybe, if you want to call it the adversary, whatever uses, is that there's no hope, there's no ability to progress or to start over. Like, I'm already going to hell, so why even try? Or I can't, this is not something I'm going to be able to recover from. And those kinds of thoughts and ideas are very powerful and can ruin an entire life.

John Dehlin [00:52:47] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:52:48] Right now, not everybody that. I'm not going to say that shame or that the idea that we tell our kids not to masturbate is the only reason why people become pornography addicts. There's plenty of people who grew up in shame based homes who are not addicts. So there are other proponents that, you know, a lot of people have tendencies to become addicted to things. That's kind of more personality traits. But it's usually if you combine two or three major things that kind of kind of put together this little boiling stew that can kind of tend to go towards those ways.

John Dehlin [00:53:21] Gotcha. So just real quick, do you know what the status is about masturbation in missions? Are you seeing people not going on missions because of masturbation or coming home because of it, or coming home from the mtc? Are you seeing any of that?

Natasha Parker [00:53:40] I wouldn't say specifically because of masturbation. Well, I guess that the church has some type of like 6 month. This is all hearsay, so I'll just put that out there. But something about that. Usually the boys are asked to abstain from masturbating for at least six months before they're given the okay to go on a mission. Whether or not every stake president or bishop holds them to that accountability, I have no idea. I have heard of some that have been held to that. Whether or not our elders are getting sent home from their missions for that, I highly doubt it. Because I've heard of a lot of other issues that are going on out in the mission fields that even then they're not getting sent home. So maybe there's been a case or two out there. I'm sure there have been. And maybe when it becomes excessive, I mean, like for instance, if you're addicted to masturbation and you're masturbating like five times a day or something along those lines, maybe, you know, if they can't get that in control, if they can't go out with their partner because they've got to stay home and masturbate, well, maybe they do get sent home for those kinds of issues.

John Dehlin [00:54:52] Okay.

Natasha Parker [00:54:53] But as far as you know, I masturbated two or three times on my mission and I got sent home. I've never heard of that.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] Okay, okay. Right, okay. We talked a little bit about some of the different areas in sexuality that can affect adults. Just generally, if you had just a few of the most common of those to dig a little bit deeper, you know, couples especially. What are some of the things you're seeing most with couples as they struggle with sexuality and maybe a few high level pointers that you often give marriage couples when they're struggling with sex?

Sexual Issues in LDS Marriages and Relationships

Natasha Parker [00:55:40] Well, probably with couples, the number one issue that comes up is libido differences. So in other words, one of them has a higher sex drive than the other. And therefore now they're not compatible in their sexuality together. Now this is normal. I mean, nobody has a perfectly synchronized sex drive with your partner. But it can become excessive when you've gone several months without having sex, or when it always feels like the one partner's initiating and the other partner's always like, well, okay, even if they do it is kind of that. Well, if I have to kind of things, it's not very intimacy producing.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] Is there a minimum frequency that you recommend to your, to your clients?

Natasha Parker [00:56:30] No, not necessarily. I think that that's very highly personalized. But I think that, you know, if you want to do the bell curve kind of thing, most couples that are, what, satisfied. If I'm doing quote quotation marks, you can't really see me do normal. Right? All those wor. They fall somewhere between once to three times a week. You know, that's kind of the bell curve in the normal range. There are couples that can have sex once a month and be perfectly happy with that because they both feel fine with that. And there are couples that want to have sex five times a week and love that and feel great about that. The problem comes when you have the person who wants to have sex once a month married to the person who wants to have it five times a week or something like that. It doesn't even have to be that drastic of a difference to have some significant issues. And I guess how that relates to our religion, I think goes back to this idea. And I do see this, I'm talking in stereotypes and I kind of hate that. But this issue is more to do with women having the lower libido than men. That's not always the case, but that tends to be more common anyway. And I think it's Laura Brotherson who wrote and they were not ashamed or something like that. The link is on my blog, if people want to look it up. But it talks about this idea of good girl syndrome. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about we teach our kids to kind of shut off their sexuality. And women in general are, I think, maybe even given a higher. I mean, the girls are the ones that can get pregnant. So I think in culture in general, girls are treated differently sexually than boys. There's just some kind of inherent sexism that happens. So girls are very much taught to kind of shut that hole off. Don't dress immodestly, don't attract attention to yourself sexually. Do not have sex, do not think sex, do not. You know, when you go out on A date. Don't let him touch you.

John Dehlin [00:58:46] Dress modestly.

Natasha Parker [00:58:47] Don't dress. Mostly I've heard of a lot of Mormons who even say, don't kiss him until you're married. I don't agree with that. So things like that, you know, that just very much shut off that part of your life until you're married. And then these girls, there's a lot of messages there that are kind of shame based again, that this is a bad thing, that this is not good, that you shouldn't do this. And then they're supposed to just switch it all back on.

John Dehlin [00:59:17] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:59:18] You know, with a. In just one day when they get married. And I think a lot of women have a hard time with that. Women are much more psychological in their sexuality than men are to begin with. I mean, we need to be in the mood anyway. There's a lot of other things going on with women, but I think when you combine this particular issue with it, it can really make sex a negative aspect of their lives. And they'll have sex. They understand that their men, that their husband want, you know, needs that or wants that, and so they're willing to do it, but they're not really that engaged in it. They don't enjoy it. And therefore, the sexual relationship lacks, you know, a lot of excitement and intimacy, which is what it's supposed to be all about.

John Dehlin [01:00:05] Sure. And how do you start to help people work through that?

Natasha Parker [01:00:12] No, I guess probably education is the number one thing, is kind of normalizing, you know, normalizing that this is why this has happened, and exploring their backgrounds, having them tell me, you know, what. What were the messages that you received about sex? What would be the ideal for you? You know, if you kind of visualizing a future that's different. Like, if you had no issues, what would that look like? And then actually having them do exercises that, you know, there's the sense of focus that I have a lot of my couples do, and which is basically like mutual massage. And there's all different levels. So you can do it clothed, you can do it unclothed, you know, kind of just building up the comfort level. I think couples a lot of times just really appreciate the education, just understanding that they're not weird, that this isn't. That they're not alone in this, that there's a lot of biological issues going along with this as well. You know, hormonal things, and so that they can feel like, gosh, it's not just that I'm just really a bad person or that I have, you Know I'm dysfunctional somehow.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] Right.

Natasha Parker [01:01:24] There are some dysfunctions with sexuality that can happen, you know, like women who can't ever reach orgasm, or vaginismus, where it actually hurts when they're penetrated, or sex shouldn't hurt. So there are some things that can be biological in nature that are going on or the psychology can be also adding to that.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] And some husbands can be pretty insensitive, I guess, to satisfying their wives, is

Natasha Parker [01:01:55] that I think that there can be insensitivity on both parts. Yeah, sometimes. And I have seen great sensitivity on both parts and really great willingness to really work together and try to figure something out. So I think the insensitivity comes from feeling hurt, feeling unwanted, you know, feeling like, you know, gosh, every time I approach you, you don't. You roll your eyes and you're like, ugh. Again, that's kind of painful.

John Dehlin [01:02:30] And probably understanding the love language of the other is an important part of setting a stage for proper intimacy, right?

Natasha Parker [01:02:38] Yeah, absolutely. And that's. I don't know how many people know what a love language is, but there's a book called Love Languages. I think it's Gary Chapman, who wrote that. And kind of this idea that we think other people think like we do. We're kind of all egocentric in that way.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] Yeah, right. Yeah.

Natasha Parker [01:02:56] So if I like to be touched, you must like to be touched. You know, when you don't like to be touched, then that must mean you don't like me because, you know, I like to be touched. So instead of thinking, well, maybe you just don't like to be touched, maybe you like me to, you know, wash the dishes instead, or bring you flowers or, you know, help with the kids or. I mean, there's all kinds of. I guess those are all kind of male things. So I'm being sexist too, here. But there's definitely, you know, I think even, you know, women who don't like to be touched don't recognize that that's a love language sometimes of their. Of their husbands. And until they're willing to give what the person needs instead of just willing to give what I would like to receive. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [01:03:46] Sure, sure. I have to admit, I do have the impression that, I guess I have the expectation that 90% of the people you'd see would be couples in their 20s and 30s or 40s, where the husband wants it more than the wife and. Or the husband isn't really doing what he needs to make it pleasurable or to make the setting and the environment Comfortable for the wife. Is that. Is that an unfair sort of generalization, that it's at that level and that that's the most common scenario by a large number, or is it much more?

Natasha Parker [01:04:25] Well, and maybe this is my systems coming out, but I am very wary of blaming one person over the other. I think women need to take responsibility for their sex lives just as much as men need to take responsibility for it. So I think it's unfair when we as women say, well, you know, he's just not nice, and he didn't help me with the dishes. And so therefore, you know, now he just wants to have sex even though I'm, you know, tired. And, I mean, there's some truth to that. And the man does have to understand that that usually doesn't work. So if he wants success in the future, that's not a good path to follow. But I don't think that we can just sit back and go, well, he's just not a good enough husband. So I'm not willing to do this, you know, in our marriage. I don't think that's healthy. So I really try to look at what. How they're both communicating and acting, you know, in their marriages, so that they can both take responsibility for something, even if the husband is a real jerk, you know, is she enabling that? So, you know, so do you see what I'm saying? There's something. Why are you with a big jerk then? You know, like, what was it so attractive about being with a big jerk? So in other words, how can she stand up for herself more and say, hey, this isn't appropriate, or, I'm not going to stand for this and I love you, but this isn't going to work so that he can have clear boundaries or things like that. We're kind of getting more into now abusive relationships, which can be emotionally abusive, but it can also be just as abusive to, you know, shut down and just say, well, you're not allowed to touch me, and I don't care if you have that need. So, you know, the whole idea of, well, I'll give you what you need if you give me what you need, that doesn't usually work.

John Dehlin [01:06:20] Yeah.

Natasha Parker [01:06:21] First of all, we have to kind of meet our own needs a lot of times and then be willing to meet somebody else's needs. I mean, all the interesting conundrums in marriage always fascinate me as far as what heavenly Father is really trying to teach us through this process.

John Dehlin [01:06:40] Sure. It's a great laboratory, isn't it? Yeah.

Natasha Parker [01:06:43] Being connected with this total other individual and how that works. So it's fascinating and it can be a great challenge and journey for those of us who choose to see it that way.

John Dehlin [01:06:54] Yeah, well again this is just going to be a high level view and I hope to get into all these topics a lot more in depth coming episodes. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter or through your ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about that. Those last two music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out at claytonpixton.com or skypixon.com that's sky with an E S K Y-E pixton.com thank you.

Natasha Parker [01:07:55] Though like the wonder the sun gone down.

Same-Sex Attraction and LGBTQ Experiences in the Church

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 169

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] I'll ask you one last question about sexuality just because it's so important. I guess there's this idealistic hope within traditional, orthodox believing Mormonism that homosexuality is somehow a choice, that somehow it's a transgression, that it's just evil, pure and simple. And that if you find the right therapist or if you pray and read your scriptures or think the right thoughts or, you know, do athletics and spend more time with the opposite sex, that you can un gay yourself in some way. Have you had any experience with that at all to either validate that hope or to invalidate that hope or expectation?

Natasha Parker [00:01:10] Well, the becoming un gay. No, I have not seen any research to validate that. I've not seen any studies to validate that. I've never met anybody that would validate that. Now, I do know of people that choose to stay in a heterosexual relationship even though they are homosexual. And there are different ways people do that, some with more success than others. But the idea that somehow we can change our arousal template is usually not, at least right now, not well founded in research.

John Dehlin [00:01:51] So whatever it is that turns you on or gets you sexually aroused is just something that you didn't choose or that's kind of beyond your ability to control.

Natasha Parker [00:02:03] Yeah, I think arousal is very difficult to control. Now, what we do with that arousal is obviously where the gospel comes in, right? Because, I mean, that's like teenage kids who want to have sex. So we're. They're getting aroused, which is normal, but we want to help them maybe control that or know what to do with that arousal once it comes up. Now, so that has nothing to do with homosexuality. But I mean, I think that, yeah, this idea that somehow. And I think there has been quite a bit of studies done, especially back in the 70s and 80s, on, like, electroconvulsive therapy or, you know, trying to rewire the brain or, you know, because there's a lot of people who are homosexual, who are desperate not to be homosexual because they want to fit into their cultural norm and they want to have a family and they want to kind of follow the normal course that they see most of their culture following. So they will submit themselves to all kinds of therapies or trials or exploratory types of things to try to. To try to do that. And I've never seen anything that has been, you know, like, that has converted a homosexual to A heterosexual. Now, there are. There's also. We have to discuss that there's a range in sexuality. You know, so there are people who consider themselves bisexual who can actually be turned on or aroused with both genders. So maybe in those cases that's easier because then they just decide, well, I'm just going to choose to behave in my heterosexual lifestyle because they still. There's still some arousal for the opposite gender. But there are people who fall, I guess, more on the extremes of the continuum where they really do not have any arousal for the opposite gender. So what are the.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] What are the options? What are the options through therapy for someone who's just 100% attracted to the same sex or same gender? Like, what are the different options for an LDS church member in that situation? And what are the prospects or the success rates in your experience for the different possibilities?

Natasha Parker [00:04:26] Well, I guess it's how we define success. Success means that they're now going to be mental health. Is heterosexual, then? No, that's not going to be successful. I think, you know, I. The people that I've worked with in this. In this situation are probably the most heartbreaking cases I've had because I. There aren't a lot of tools that I have to offer them. I mean, there's the tool of being celibate the rest of their lives. That's pretty rugged. There's the tool of trying to enter a heterosexual relationship, or they're already in a heterosexual relationship and now what. What do we do now? Or how do we, you know, have a relationship where this shouldn't matter to us, this aspect of our relationship, or the physical intimacy shouldn't be important to us. That's very difficult. And then there's the route of, well, accept who you are and, you know, go join the homosexual lifestyle, which goes against our values as a religion. So, so it's very. I don't have any, like, great answers. We talk, we discuss all the options. We discuss what they want. We discuss, you know, we. Again, I normalize, I educate, I talk about it not being necessarily a choice of arousal, but a choice of behavior. And, you know, what can they do with that? And so, you know, I think all those things are helpful and help them to try to, you know, make a path that's viable for them. And in the church, I've seen all kinds of things. People leave the church, People stay married in their temple marriages. People are celibate. People are doing all kinds of different things. People divorce their temple marriage spouse and leave their family and join the homosexual Lifestyle, people even are staying in their marriages and having separate sexual lives. I mean, that's even happening within the Mormon faith.

John Dehlin [00:06:31] I've heard often for those who decide just to not be sexual at all, or when they discuss that pathway, they say, hey, you know, some people never get married, they just never find the one that they love. Or you know, some people have their spouse die and they don't find someone to get married. And that's just part of life. If you live the gospel. You know, some of us just don't get that intimacy and that's just part of the package. Is there anything more to the story that we should know about that option

Natasha Parker [00:07:03] other than just, I think we say those things and what happens is we're just shutting down conversation. I think that people go, uh huh, okay. And some people do that and, and then other people just go back into their stories of shame and secrecy, which is what I see more often. So in other words, you know, if that's the expectation, if they go into their bishop and that's what the bishop tells them, what can they say to that? Oh, you're wrong. So they just nod their head and they go, yeah, you're right. And they go on and they either continue behaviors in secrecy and shame or they leave the church or they stay celibate.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:07:46] There's not a lot of great options here.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] Right. And have you seen people try to remain celibate for an extended period of time? And what that, what makes that so hard? Is it that bad?

Natasha Parker [00:08:06] Well, I think if you are a normal, sexual, healthy individual, it's difficult, yes, I think that is hard to completely ignore all those urges that you have for an unlimited amount of time. It's one thing when we're single adults, right, trying to hold on for a few years, but if you've got the rest of your life to look at in that state, most of the homosexual men that have spoken with me will actually say, I'm not willing to just be celibate the rest of my life. That's not feasible option for me. So, you know, what do I tell them? You know, I have to respect that. And you know, I think also with, I mean as we grow older, we do tend, I mean, all of us have sexual drives that go through cycles. You know, men tend to hit their sexual peak earlier than women and then as we age, sexual drive does decrease. It doesn't go away. And there's many elderly people who are having really great sex lives. Maybe not as often, may not with the same frequency, but usually Quite intimate. That's a whole nother thing we never talk about is the elderly having sex. But I think that, you know, people who choose to be celibate, older is probably a little bit easier, but I wouldn't say it's easy. And then there's people who truly are just asexual, who. And that's not necessarily healthy. But if they're okay with it and they don't care and they're just going to plan on being celibate the rest of their lives, then, you know, that's an option for them. But that's not necessarily considered healthy.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] Right. So you can't just look at everyone as being monolithic in that regard. There's sexual orientation and then there's sex drive. And the combination of those two can put people all over the spectrum in terms of what's possible.

Natasha Parker [00:10:05] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:10:05] And what's healthy and what's feasible and what's just totally unreasonable to expect.

Natasha Parker [00:10:10] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] Yeah.

Natasha Parker [00:10:12] And, you know, and a lot of people will say, well, what about, you know, like when your spouse dies or when your spouse, you know, is what, a paraplegic or, you know, but those. It's difficult to say, you know, you should look at somebody else's completely different situation and apply it to yourself. And when people have to deal with those things, they're very difficult in their own right. And people struggle immensely in those issues as well. So I think it's kind of. It kind of is minimizing to say, well, you know, there's plenty of people who aren't able to have sex, so you should just be fine with that.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:10:49] When it's such a part of our human development, it's such a part of how our Heavenly Father made us. It's a huge part of us.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] Yeah, yeah, it's huge. So let's turn a bit and talk about something that is brought up quite a bit in the LDS context, and that's depression. There's this impression that Utah leads the nation in depression. Some people like to say that. Or that we lead the nation in the use of psychotropic, you know, medication. And there's also the stigma that the Mormon lifestyle is particularly hard on women, that raising all these children and being confined to the home and all the demands that the church puts on women leads to a very high depression rates for women within the church. Why don't we back up and just talk a little bit about your experiences about depression with Mormon people, men and women?

Understanding and Treating Depression in LDS Contexts

Natasha Parker [00:11:55] Well, I think depression is a very common disorder. I guess. I guess it's a difficult word. It's kind of like the addiction word because we use it in both clinical ways and we use it very much in non clinical ways. So for instance, it's very common to hear people say, oh, I feel depressed today or I'm feeling depressed or I'm in a depressed funk. And depression in that sense is part of normal life. We all have our ups and downs, we have our mood swings. There's days that are harder than others. So that's kind of normal. I think where depression really becomes very problematic is when it becomes life. It really alters your life. You find yourself not being able to get up. You find yourself losing weight or gaining weight or not sleeping well. Feelings of hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness to the point of having suicidal thoughts even. Many people have suicidal thoughts without ever trying to commit suicide because they don't believe in it. But they still have those thoughts kind of as an escape. If I could only just die, I'd be better off, my family would be better off, everybody would be better off. So those are suicidal thoughts even without a plan attached to them, which are greatly disabilitating for people, disabling for people to have those kinds of thoughts on a continual basis. So yeah, and part of that can be with attached to high expectations. You have high expectations of yourself due to your religion or whatever and you never can meet those expectations. So you're always feeling badly about yourself. You know, you're comparing yourself to others who seem to be able to meet those expectations and you can't. So that's maybe where it comes in with Mormon women. Although I like to think of the fact that, you know, it seems like a bad rap that the Mormons in Utah are getting, you know, help for their depression. But what, why can't that be a good thing? Maybe they're being self sufficient and going in when they need help.

John Dehlin [00:14:14] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:14:15] So maybe that's because that is part of our culture too is to, you know, when there's a problem, fix it. So maybe we're just ahead of the game on that. But of course nobody's going to paint it that way. They're going to paint it as a negative. I think that men have similar issues with depression than women, but they tend to deal with them differently so they're not going to talk about it as often. So even though the numbers show that women are more depressed than men, I'm not sure how true that is. There's a great book called let's see if I can see it here. It's Called New Light on Depression by David Bebel, B I E B E L and some other guy. Anyway, it's written from a Christian perspective, not an LDS perspective, but they do a great job of explaining all the different types of depression. You know, the situational depressions. You know, like something has really happened bad in your life and so you're depressed about it. The may more moral depression. Right. Like you're not doing everything right. So now you're depressed. And that can be true or untrue. Like you could be really making some mistakes or you could just be perceiving that you're not a worthy member. And either way, that's going to lead to depression. There's biological depression, which we don't talk about a lot, and that's something that usually runs in families and many times will affect people. Even though they have pretty good lives, they feel pretty good about themselves, and yet they're having huge symptoms of depression. So that has more of a biological nature to it. And there's a lot of. They're coming out with a lot of new research on this. Like, if you look at a brain that's depressed and a brain that isn't, I mean, you can see a pretty dramatic difference. And this goes back to what we first talked about, which you asked me, you know, well, why are people hesitant to get mental health help? Well, when you break your arm, you go to the doctor, they have this X ray, you can see a very clear cut. And so you're like, yeah, I believe you. We have to do something about this. Just until recently, we really haven't been able to do that in the mental health field. I mean, the brain is hugely complex.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] It's kind of a black box.

Natasha Parker [00:16:46] Yeah, it's just, how do you measure it? How do you. But they are starting with a lot more of these MRI or CAT scans or things to be able to look at brain differences. And one of the things that they're finding is the. The depressed brain is actually smaller and it's not firing these synapses as often as they should be. So when people are like, oh, you know, antidepressants are a joke or whatever, they're really not. They really can make a huge difference for many people. And in fact, the number one treatment for depression is a combination of talk therapy and antidepressants. That's been researched many, many times, and they always come out with the same result. If you'd only do the antidepressants, they can help, but you're still having to struggle with all the Things in your life that the antidepressants don't really help you with. And if you only do talk therapy, you can start trying to focus on the things in your life, but your synapses aren't moving any faster. So the combination of those two are what makes people much more quickly be able to kind of rehabilitate from depression.

John Dehlin [00:18:04] So for you, there shouldn't be a blanket stigma against medication, psychological medication?

Natasha Parker [00:18:10] Oh, not at all, not at all.

John Dehlin [00:18:13] You see it as sometimes critical and

Natasha Parker [00:18:17] often very useful, life altering and many times life saving.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] What about over prescribed at times?

Natasha Parker [00:18:25] Yeah, there's, you know, there's a worry about that. And you know, if you just go in and have a few symptoms and the first thing they do is give you medicine or we want that kind of, that immediate result, the magic pill. Right. Whether it's diet or depression or whatever it is, we want to just be able to take something and be magically better. And that's why I say it takes, you know, the two things in conjunction because it's not just as easy usually as just taking, you know, a pill. And antidepressants in general are complicated because they take two to three weeks to work.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:19:00] And doses can be different and there's several different kinds. And so a lot of people will try a minimum dose for three weeks of one medication, decide it doesn't work, decide medicines are a hoax and never try it again. And what's hard about antidepressants is that you need to be more creative with your physician. Or if you've got really severe depression, you really should be seeing a psychiatrist.

John Dehlin [00:19:25] Right, right.

Natasha Parker [00:19:28] Because they can even do combinations of meds and people can have a very different life.

John Dehlin [00:19:35] Sure.

Natasha Parker [00:19:36] It's just like people who have diabetes and need insulin or so. Yeah, I'm actually more worried about people being under medicated than over medicated because I just don't think people are going in to get help to begin with. They're not even getting the chance to be on medication.

John Dehlin [00:19:54] Do you find that psychiatrists are sufficiently referring people to talk therapists, or do you find that psychiatrists are just encouraging people to just rely on the medication? That's it.

Natasha Parker [00:20:08] Most of the psychiatrists I know are encouraging talk therapy as well. I think again, the research is shown by all of us. Just like I know that the medicine helps, but I'm a therapist, I'm not a doctor, so I'm referring my clients to that as well. So I would think that it's just part of their ethical responsibility to know what is the treatment that is best applicable in each situation, and therapy for depression is part of that.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:20:39] So most of my. Most of the therapists or psychiatrists that I know are referring out.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] That's great.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] That's great.

Natasha Parker [00:20:45] Psychiatrists. The art of psychiatry has changed dramatically. I mean, they used to be the ones that would spend an hour with people, and some psychiatrists still do, but most psychiatrists now, you know, you get them for 15 minutes because of all the health insurance and all those things that have happened. So they don't have the time to do the therapy with you, the therapy piece.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] That's right, yeah. It's not cost efficient, not cost effective. But is there a pathway that you've seen where medication was? You know, for some people, medication was necessary and even critical in the beginning, but through talk therapy and maybe some other adjustments, people were able to not always require the medication, you know, in the medium to long term. Or is it sort of what, once you're on it, you're going to be on it for the rest of your life kind of thing?

Natasha Parker [00:21:35] Oh, absolutely not. People who tend to have the biological reasons for depression tend to be ones that will probably need it the rest of their lives. Kind of like a diabetic, like juvenile diabetes versus diabetes when you're older. Right. The type 1 and type 2. The type 2 you can treat with diet and eventually maybe you can get off the insulin, but the type 1 is pretty genetic and part of your body, so you need the insulin the rest of your life. So depression is kind of like that as well. Like people who have situational depression or even moral depression or kind of more of those things that have to do with the way they think about themselves or the way something that's happened in their life usually will not need medicine the rest of their life.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:22:19] But people who have a biological foundation for it may truly need it.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] Right, right.

Natasha Parker [00:22:25] And I always say, you know, just you can try to wean yourself off and see how you feel. And if you feel really a lot worse, then that's kind of a sign that you probably need that chemical in your body.

John Dehlin [00:22:37] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:22:37] Because your body's lacking that chemical.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] Right. Yeah. Is there. So we, we touched on this briefly, but is there any credibility to those who would say Mormonism is bad for women or too hard on women, or, you know, Mormonism causes depression in women. In your anecdotal experience, is that overreaching or is there a little bit of truth to that or no truth at all or a ton of truth or what are your thoughts on that.

Natasha Parker [00:23:06] Maybe this is where my, the gospel doctrine of opposition in all things comes into play for me. Maybe this is my bias, but I think that there's good and bad in everything for anybody. So can some aspects of our Mormon culture be negative? Absolutely. And I see that kind of stuff all the time. But there's huge parts of our Mormon culture that are extremely positive for people and that help them have purpose in life and help them, you know, have goals and kind of an eternal perspective and, you know, give meaning to their lives and give them structure and routine, which all of us need at some level. Help them think about things that are not just, you know, the here and now, but what are we really working towards? Common goals, you know, couples. So, I mean, it's just how people choose to approach their religion, I think. And if you want to approach it in a negative way and get overly stressed and be anxious that you're not the perfect Mormon wife and that you haven't baked bread in the last week and you haven't done your 50 names or, you know, I mean, we can go down the list. Yeah, that, that can be not a healthy approach. You know, there's a time and a season for, for everything. And I love the scripture that says, you know, you don't need to run faster than you have strength. And we don't always remember that. But, you know, I'm not so sure that it's the Mormon culture that does that completely. I think it's part of it. But it's also our individual personalities. I mean, some of us are more anxious and you know, even if they weren't Mormons, they might still be dealing with similar anxieties. So again, there's a lot of different components. I'm not a believer of a one component type thing causing everything.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:24:56] There's a lot of different pieces to everybody's puzzle.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] Yeah, that systems thing coming back together again, huh?

Natasha Parker [00:25:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] I mean, really, there's genetics, there's. There's hormones and chemicals. There's upbringing. If you're, if you believe in the church, there's some type of spiritual or, you know, pre sort of intelligence that you bring with you. That's going to be a factor. There's the family system that you're put in. There's the, there's the ward, and every ward is going to be different. There's your family that you were brought up in, there's your marital relationship, there's your relationship with your children, if you have them, and whatever else comes along. It's just so Many factors. It's hard to really ever feel comfortable nailing it to anything.

Natasha Parker [00:25:47] Right, Yeah. I mean, your personality traits and your temperament. And for any of us who have more than one child, I mean, you can see how they're just each completely different. And even growing up in the same home with the same DNA flowing through them, they're extremely different and will perceive you as parents differently. You know, if anybody's had a chat with their siblings lately and we, I remember having several powwows with my siblings where we would all just kind of be like, what. What family did you grow up in?

John Dehlin [00:26:20] Right, right.

Natasha Parker [00:26:22] So we just perceive things differently. Again, it goes back to those love languages and what, how we're wired in so many different ways.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] Right, right. Yeah. And I guess a way to summarize this little segment is, you know, you've been spending several years now, particularly with LDS clients, and in spite of the fact that you're dealing daily with mental illness in the context of the Mormon Church or the LDS Church or the Mormon culture, you have not, is it fair to say you have not come away with the feeling that the church is just overall damaging to people's mental health and destructive?

Natasha Parker [00:27:08] No.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] Even though you're dealing with it every day?

Natasha Parker [00:27:12] Right. No. I would say that first of all, I want to classify a few things. The gospel is everything that will direct us towards mental health. If you just take the basic teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament and all the basic things that he talked about, love and compassion and communication service, those are the things that will. Those are the basics, right. Of the gospel and quite frankly, the basics of many world religions. And those are the things that grow as closer not only to our God, but to each other and, you know, and help us have perspective on ourselves. Now then you break it down. You have, so you have the basic gospel. Then you have church doctrine which is, you know, now man has stepped in somewhat and interpreted the gospel. And some church doctrine is beautiful and wonderful. And again, you know, families are forever kind of a thing. And some things that are very unique to our religion that help us. I mean, my mother, for instance, that was one of the things that, you know, she lost her mother when she was very young. So that was one thing that helped her join the church. I'm a second generation lds, Mormon. So that idea that we can be together with our families after this world, that's a very unique doctrine. It's very uplifting for families to feel that way for the most part. If you've grown up in an abusive family or something, then that might be problematic. But so we have many doctrines that help us have great ideas about our lives and where we're going and where we're directed. Then we have some other things that we're not maybe quite sure of. Oral sex, masturbation. Are those things helping us or not helping us? And maybe we're still in a flex and trying to figure that stuff out. And that's why I love the whole idea of revelation, that it's ongoing and, you know, that's something that's kind of unique to our, to our religion as well. Then you have culture and if anything is going to be damaging, it's your culture. And that's when you can't step outside of the cultural box that you are in and use these ideas of the gospel and revelation and doctrine to get you to a different place.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] Right, right. And so it's important for us to learn how to try and distinguish, although it's probably not easy because my guess is that, you know, on the Mormon Internet, we've been trying to pin down exactly what Mormon doctrine is for quite a long time now. And it's not just like you've.

Natasha Parker [00:29:51] Fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:29:52] Yeah. Just like you've been trying to figure out just something as simple as masturbation. Yes or no, up or down, no pun intended.

Natasha Parker [00:29:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:01] You know, trying to figure out whether, you know, how crucial it really is to bake that bread or have a garden can be hard for some people.

Natasha Parker [00:30:11] Yeah. Well, these men, you know, and women who started our church were fascinating individuals, you know, very open minded, very much willing to step out of their box and boy, go with all kinds of new ideas and, you know, move their entire families and lose everything that they had, you know, financially, to kind of follow their thoughts and their philosophies and, you know, the way that they interpreted this new religion that they were forming. So I hope that we can use them as examples for how we can also still continue to do that with all that they gave us and still continue to tweak this and make this even more perfect. And because it's a process, everything in life is a process.

John Dehlin [00:31:01] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:31:02] And we're continually progressing, in my opinion, towards, you know, until we walk towards back to God. I mean, that's what we're all trying to do, is walking back to God. And so we're continually progressing in one way or another. And hopefully we can use those types of philosophical ideas to, you know, help us get out of a funk or help us in a relationship that seems dire or help us with our ideas of our own sexuality and try to separate some of these things out. Culture versus doctrine versus gospel versus, you know, what, what is our own personal relationship with our God like? One of the things that I've really been focusing on lately is your religion should be an anchor in your life. It should be a beacon of hope, of light. It should be what draws you, you know, inward and help you meditate and think about your life. It should be something that helps you connect to something larger than yourself. It should not be something that's causing shame and ongoing sadness and anxiety and, you know, expectations and comparisons to other people. That's not what your religion should be about. So my new mantra is convert. And I'm not saying convert out of Mormonism. I'm just saying convert within your own religion to something more deeper and more spiritual and meaning, if that's where you're at.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] Well, let's talk about that for a second. That's a great philosophy and a great segue to some of the other things. And in each of these I'm going to acknowledge up front are multi hour topics just to scratch the surface. But I'll give my listeners a future taste of some of your insight with a few questions. Here's the first. When someone comes to you and says the church just isn't working for me, I'm not enjoying it, I don't like it, I don't feel the spirit, I haven't got the spiritual confirmation or it's just too stressful or politically I'm just not a good fit. And is have you ever seen an instance and this is going to be tough to answer, but have you ever seen an instance where for someone to heal, leaving the church actually might have been a necessary component of their healing? Or do you, or would you say that's never a good answer or it's just never your place to even opine on something like that? Where would you come down on something like that? Do you think that there are some people just like some people might be be gay and some people might have biological depression? Are there some people who just aren't going to find happiness in Mormonism?

Faith Transitions, Doubt, and Leaving the Church

Natasha Parker [00:33:52] Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to ever say that one certain path is always necessary. But I have seen people who have left the church and who have led maybe healthier, happier lives. But was that necessary? I'm not sure I can say that. I think that there are many ways, many different paths to leading happier, healthier lives. That's the route they chose to go. And for them, it worked at that particular time. And maybe they did need some distance from some of these more cultural things that they've been embedded in their whole lives and have really caused some significant issues. So I'm not comfortable saying that's the answer for anybody or not the answer for anybody as a therapist, you know, I'm not. That's not my role. My role is not to tell them to leave or not leave the church. They need. They need to feel safe and comfortable. Otherwise, I'm overstepping my bounds. They need to be able to feel safe and comfortable coming to me and expressing these thoughts and ideas and having therapy be a way we can explore the positives and the cons that can happen of any decision, whether that's leaving the church or leaving your marriage. But at the end of the day, it's not my position to advise people to do anything, any of those things. They. People need to take responsibility for their own, you know, actions and decisions.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] Did you ever, at any point in your career, find yourself sort of rooting for them to decide one way or the other? Like, trying to nudge them towards staying in the church, for example, if they. If they're starting to feel like it doesn't work for them or, you know, keeping a marriage together, if they're kind of trying to decide if they want the marriage to stay together? Like, do you ever find yourself wanting to nudge people in one direction?

Natasha Parker [00:35:42] You know, I want to say no to that and feel all cool, but it's impossible. And that's something, as therapists that we have to be continually aware of. And that's why we, you know, are supervised, and that's why we go to conferences, and that's why there's all kinds of ethical, you know, rules that we need to be aware of. And because it's impossible for me to think that my own personal experience or my own personal ideas or my own personal feelings are not going to affect my work. It's just the type. This is not a factory, you know, this is a very personal type of work that I do, and I'm part of that equation. And I try to tell people when they come in to see me that they need to be aware of that as well. And it's another interesting statistic that I come across all the time, is that the number one thing that helps people in therapy and is not the modality, it's the bond with the therapist. And so you can be a behaviorist or systemic or a, you know, cognitive, behavioral, or you can be any type of therapist. But if you cannot forge a bond, you can be highly smart and very capable, but you're not going to be able to help those people. And so I tell people very much, you know, when they come in, if you're not comfortable here, if you don't like me, if I bug you, my stuff style doesn't work with you. That is okay. You know that there's so many different personalities. You need to go find somebody else because this will be a waste of time for you.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] So that's recommend people shop for a therapist.

Natasha Parker [00:37:21] Oh, absolutely. If you're not comfortable with your therapist, get out.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] Yeah. And that, that terms. It's a therapeutic alliance. Right. Isn't that what they call the relationship between the client and therapist?

Natasha Parker [00:37:36] And what you were talking about is called transference and countertrans. You know, when therapists, you know, like, if somebody comes in with a situation that I recently went through or something like that, you know, I need to be very careful to not impose my own ideas or thoughts or whatever. Yeah, there's. There's many times that I've had to kind of check myself, you know, especially with marriages, I think when I'm rooting for them to stay or not stay. Yeah, I have to be very, very careful about that.

John Dehlin [00:38:09] Yeah, that's a tough one. What do you do when somebody has the major crisis of faith where they've stumbled on the really tough church history issues, just see the church as fraudulent and start even thinking of it as like a cult, but maybe their spouse is in a different place or maybe not. But have you been able to have success with somebody who's just at that point where they're beyond and never going back to the naive or the simple or the orthodox way of viewing Mormonism?

Natasha Parker [00:38:53] Success in what way?

John Dehlin [00:38:55] Well, let's say for one, have you ever been able to help someone work through that major crisis of faith and still feel good about active participation and membership? And is that common or uncommon for someone, once they hit that really dark place, to be able to feel good again about full, active and happy membership?

Natasha Parker [00:39:18] I think where most of my work has been in this is not so much about their membership, it's about their family life. So in other words, how are they going to continue to function as a family? Because in most of these cases, church, the church lifestyle has been very much a part of their family life. And now, you know, one or the other spouse is, you know, changing kind of how they feel about things. And that changes the entire dance, you know, that this family has been Doing, especially in the marriage, you know, how are they going to raise their kids? What are they going to tell them? So some, you know, there's all kinds of different solutions people can come up with, and people are very ingenious and very good about doing this once they're given, I think, the space to talk about it and able to lower their defenses enough to be able to have conversations about what it is that they can come up with as a family together. So there's. From the person who still goes to church every week and is completely active, even though the spouse knows that they don't believe a word of it. But, you know, they feel like it's important to give their kids a culture and a tradition. And there are statistics showing that church attendance doesn't matter what church you go to, can actually help a family be closer. And so that, you know, they choose to kind of stay with the flow because of those types of things. There are people who choose to not necessarily believe every single aspect of every little thing, but that still see great value in the basic gospel doctrine that our church offers. And so that's one way that they can be at peace with. So they're not going to get all caught up in talks about polygamy or things like that. But they're very much into the talks about, you know, the pure love of Christ or charity, you know, that kind of stuff. So it's one way people can still lead active lives. Then there's people who decide, look, I'm. I'm going to support you. You know, you're my spouse and I know you want to go with the kids, so I'll help you get the kids ready. Maybe I'll go to sacrament with you, or maybe I'll go with you twice a month. There's families that go twice a month to church, go twice a month and go on a family hike or go drive around, do something in the nature, you know, or do something completely different, more on a different spiritual realm. Right. Still spiritual, but. And so that's kind of a compromise between the spouses. Then there's the spouse that just says, you know, I'm really just not able to do this at all. And I'm not going to go to church at all, but I'm still going to respect your right to go to church. And then, you know, those are a little bit more difficult because then, you know, do the kids stay at home or do they go with the parents? So those are all things that people have to negotiate.

John Dehlin [00:42:10] How about the. I'm not going to go to church, and I'm not going to let my kids be raised in the church. And I'd really like you to stop going to church, too. Do you get that?

Natasha Parker [00:42:21] I have gotten that a few times, but that's usually not. That's not been the majority of the case for me at all. Like when he said the cult thing, most of the people that I've seen get disenfranchised with the church. It's more on a historical basis. And they still see value in the church as far as kind of the basic teachings, because these are not teachings that are just. These are teachings that kind of are international. I mean, they're not just unique to ours. And I try to do a lot of work on common values. Like, what are your common values? You still share many common values with your spouse and in what you want to teach your children. You know, if you take out the church, most people still want to teach their children about education and about being kind and about, you know, taking care of themselves and, you know, taking care of the world. I mean, there's so many different things that people can. Usually when I have people do these lists, they come up with 50 things that they have in common. They have nothing to do with the church or that are lightly related to the church or that are more humanistic in general. You know, that just about being a good person.

John Dehlin [00:43:31] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:43:31] Like, most of us believe it's not okay to go out and kill somebody, you know, So I do a lot of work on what is still common and have them try to not. Because I think what happens so much with these couples is that they're so focused on this change that that's all that they can focus on. And so all their commonalities are going by the wayside, and they're only focusing on their differences. And so I try to get that to switch around so that they can go back to

John Dehlin [00:44:03] what unites them.

Natasha Parker [00:44:05] Right, exactly. And most people have a lot that unites them, including a big history together. So I don't think it's appropriate for anybody to think that you're gonna make a child with a person and have all the say.

John Dehlin [00:44:21] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:44:22] That's just not realistic. And that doesn't have to do just with church doctrine. And if you think that your child. You're gonna be able to protect your child from the Mormon bubble. I mean, plenty of people know about Mormons even who aren't Mormons. It's kind of like sex. People who think they're going to be able to protect their Children from knowing about sex. Doesn't matter whether you as parents talk to them about this, somebody's going to talk to them about it, right? So yeah, I'm not a big fan of the, you know, you can't and you can't. I'm going to tell you what you can't or cannot tell my child. That has to be a mutual decision and if not, both parents are going to pay in the end.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] Right. Have you ever seen the situation where a believing spouse wants to divorce a disbelieving spouse almost purely on the grounds of their loss of faith and that becoming like the primary impetus for the separation or divorce?

Divorce, Marital Crisis, and Healthy Relationships

Natasha Parker [00:45:23] I think I have seen it be the primary reason, but I think that that somehow minimizes the real issue because I think as Mormons we very well take pride that our religion is not just about thought, our religion is about action. And so the Mormon family, for the most part a large amount of their day to day lifestyle is based on church types of activities. From going to church on Sunday, to church activities that are just for fun, to family home evenings, to, I mean there's just a lot involved, you know, to visiting, teaching, home teaching. So these. So it's not just, it's not fair to say, well, they lost their testimony and therefore I'm divorcing them. And that's the only reason it really is a change in lifestyle. So people who are divorcing because of this, it's because their whole life has changed because of this kind of what we say is a simplistic thing of losing your testimony because it's not just changing your thought, it's changing much of the actions. And many people who decide they're no longer going to believe in the church decide to now start acting in ways that are very contrary to how the person that they married believes. You know, they'll start bringing alcohol into the home or they'll start looking at pornography and say there's nothing wrong with this or they'll start, you know, going and spending money on Sundays or you know, so things that now become much more complicated than just losing your religion or losing your faith. I mean on an intellectual basis it really, it does affect the day to day life. And some people don't know how to make, how to make peace with that because it's not the life they signed up for and it's not what they wanted. And so therefore they feel like they have the right to, to not continue in that path with somebody.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] How do you.

Natasha Parker [00:47:22] Irreconcilable differences, right? That's yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Is that a tough. Is that a tough nut? Is that a tough nut to crack?

Natasha Parker [00:47:30] That's very difficult. It's very painful. It's very hard. And I see many couples who find compromises and do an excellent job of working through these kinds of things and who are respectful of one another. And I see couples who aren't, you know, who aren't respectful, who don't care. I think that, you know, it's unrealistic for the spouse who leaves to think this just all of a sudden shouldn't matter to my spouse.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:47:56] I mean, you married together under a certain kind of idea of what your life was going to look like and how you were going to raise your kids, and all of a sudden you're changing all the game rules. So there has to be some. If the marriage is going to work, there has to be some type of respectful way of going about that. The couples who do go about it that way find wonderful ways to compromise and to actually enrich in their lives. In many ways, I've seen actually things that got better for them, but for the couples that choose to just, well, this is my way now or the highway, well, that's not going to go so great.

John Dehlin [00:48:35] Right? Well, good. Well, you're giving us some hope, and I'm looking forward to episodes dedicated just to talk topics like this. Well, this is, you know, I think, you know, you and I put together a list of a lot of the things we'd want to talk about just as an overview, and I think we've covered at least 60 or 75% of them. What do you think?

Natasha Parker [00:48:57] Yeah, I think that's. We've done good.

John Dehlin [00:48:59] Yeah. So I guess there's two things I'd like to do other than just thank you so far for all you've shared with us. This has been really helpful and interesting, and I, for one, am very excited for the series. But let's.

Natasha Parker [00:49:18] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:49:19] Yeah, Yeah, I think you're gonna. You're gonna help a lot of people, so.

Natasha Parker [00:49:22] Well, thanks. I think you help a lot of people, and I'm really looking forward to being. Being a part of this with you.

John Dehlin [00:49:27] Oh, thanks, Natasha. Okay, so let's. Let's end with two or maybe three things, and I won't ask you them all at once because then you won't have to. Remember questions two and three. Do you have some. Some final ideas or philosophies you just want to share generally about what it means to be healthy with ourselves and our relationships? You talked a little bit about a concept called differentiation in some of the talking that we did before we started. So do you want to go ahead and finish up with a few thoughts in that realm and then I'll ask you just two more questions?

Natasha Parker [00:50:04] Sure. Well, I think that the concept of differentiation, a therapist called Murray Bowen came up with that term. And it was this idea of families and individuals and all of us in our relationships are in a continuum together. And we go from being way too tightly enmeshed. That's another term. So in other words, a family who's enmeshed doesn't have a lot of leeway for doing things differently than what the family prescribes to being disengaged, which is you can just do whatever the heck anybody wants to because nobody cares. And then somewhere in the middle, there is this idea of differentiation, which is kind of this term that we're all trying to become differentiated, which is different from individuated. I think our culture makes a lot of noise about being an individual and being individualized, and that's very healthy. Well, it's not completely healthy because an individual is an island and we don't want to be islands. We want to be in relationships, whether that's with our families or our spouses or our kids or whoever. So this idea of differentiation is we can be very connected with our loved ones and have great relationships and love each other and serve one another and do the day to day stuff that we all do together and at the same time still be an individual. So that I don't have to get lost in that process, that I don't have to completely sacrifice myself, the process of helping somebody else, or being part of some of this other system.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:51:40] And the metaphor I love to use is, you know, if you've ever traveled on an airplane, which I have with kids many times, they'll say, okay, so when you're traveling with kids, you're a little bit more nervous. I'm paying more attention to what these ladies are telling me or the men that, oh my gosh, I'm not even remembering the word. But the people who work the street, the stewardesses. Flight attendants. Yes, the flight attendants. Thank you. They'll say, you know, if we have problems, the little gas masks will come down. And you are not to put them on your children first, you are to put them on yourself. And that's always, you know, it's hard as a mom because the first reaction is to save your kid. But I can't save my kid if I'm unconscious. And so I have to Put it on first. I have to put on my own mask first. And that, that's the metaphor I like to give about differentiation, that we serve ourselves and we help ourselves because we want to help and serve others. And then that's a very nice mixture of not being too selfish and not being selfish enough. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:52:48] Sure, sure. And that's, that's something, I hate to admit it, that Oprah taught me. You really, if you're not well, you really can't, you really can't do a good job of helping others be well.

Natasha Parker [00:53:02] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] And you can't always be well on an island. You kind of need others to help you.

Natasha Parker [00:53:09] That's pretty lonely on an island. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:13] So you kind of have to strike that balance, don't you?

Natasha Parker [00:53:16] And it's the best, you know, I think most of us want to be. For those of us who are parents, we want to teach our kids and give them the best we can, unless we're teach. And we teach them the main ways by example. And so if you're overly anxious or overly depressed or overly whatever because of your situation, then that's what you're teaching them. And, you know, if you have an awful marriage, then that's what you're teaching them. So those are the incentives for taking care of ourselves. So it's interesting for me, it's always very interesting how life is just very connected. Everything has its opposite. This idea of, oh, we need to serve others, but really we can't serve others without serving ourselves. There's always that push and pull in any type of philosophy or doctrinal type of belief system

John Dehlin [00:54:11] striking that balance.

Natasha Parker [00:54:12] That's right.

Future Topics and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [00:54:14] Well, why don't we end with you sharing with the listeners maybe a bit of a vision of what you'd like to do with, you know, with your series. Maybe some just super high level goals and maybe some topics that you really hope to try and cover. And then, and then maybe you can add an invitation for our listeners, if they have stories or experiences that really fit well into some of those categories, to either write you directly or to write me at Mormon Stories and to volunteer to come on the show and to tell their story.

Natasha Parker [00:54:58] Okay. I think my goal is similar to yours in that, you know, I believe so much in communication and education and when we are willing to speak out and share our stories or ideas or thoughts, we automatically become an asset to other people. And along with that, so I guess my thought is both from lay people and also professional people, is I would like to interview not only people who are maybe going through issues themselves, but maybe other therapists or researchers or there's a lot of great LDS members who are studying psychology or issues related to that and doing great dissertations or papers or whatever on topics such as we've been discussing. I'm interested in listening to people who. I guess my vision is not so much to have people come on and ask a question, you know, and get the help. I think my vision more is for those who have gotten the help in whatever means, whether it's more naturalistic or through medicine or through therapy, or maybe a combination of all of those things to then come on and share. Hey, this is what we went through. This is what I went through. This is how I'm dealing with it. This is what I found helpful. I would hope that no issue is taboo. That's something that's very important on my blog. I'm tired of taboo. I don't want. I want anything to be on the table.

John Dehlin [00:56:51] Right.

Natasha Parker [00:56:52] Because when things become taboo, they become usually dysfunctional. So I'd rather talk about things even if they're difficult topics, even if they're topics that might offend or might seem offensive. I would hope that we could all be mature enough in this type of venue to discuss this idea of humanity, how we all short fall short. We all are redeemable and we all have great ingenuity to succeed and progress that. That's really the drive that's within us all. So I would hope if we look at topics in that way, that it wouldn't matter what the topic would be.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Right, right. That's wonderful. That sounds like a good vision of something I'm eager to follow.

Natasha Parker [00:57:44] Good. Well, I'm excited.

John Dehlin [00:57:46] Are there some specific topics you want to throw out there for our listeners to write us in and maybe even volunteer to share their stories?

Natasha Parker [00:57:57] Well, I think any of the topics we cover today are obviously great, from sexuality to depression to the Mormon lifestyle and how that has affected people, both pro and con. But I think too what's difficult when asked that type of a question is that I don't want anybody out there listening, going, well, they didn't mention my issue, so I won't call it. Because sometimes some of the best stories are things that I've never even thought of or heard of before. And those can be very intriguing and wonderful stories. Or the other issue that happens as well, everybody's going to call in about depression, so my story doesn't matter. But everybody's story is different. And so even though we have Generic things that can be helpful to everybody. It can always be useful to hear somebody's unique take on something as common as depression, for instance.

John Dehlin [00:58:57] Right. And I'm going to completely validate that sentiment that we want a wide and a wide and a broad range of topics and stories to be shared and discussed. And having acknowledged that, I want to go ahead and list some. So, okay, so I mean, we're talking eating disorders, we're talking anxiety disorders, ocd, we're talking trichotillomania, we're talking addictions, abuse, marital problems, sexual problems, you know, sexuality, homosexuality, schizophrenia, dealing with the loved one, Alzheimer's, you know, any of that kind of stuff. Relationships, spiritual or faith crises. Anything else that just comes to mind to violate the sentiment that you just previously expressed? I want to just make sure that people know the breadth and the depth of what we're trying to cover. Did we get most of them?

Natasha Parker [00:59:54] Yeah. And it can go on. So. And some of those things, people may not even know what they are. So that's exciting too, to explain what some of these things. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:06] Beautiful. All right, well, Natasha Parker, I just want to thank you so much. Again, the website is mormontherapist blogspot.com, is that right?

Natasha Parker [01:00:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:00:18] And I hope to work with you to get your own website up soon. Is that something?

Natasha Parker [01:00:24] Yes, because I'm technologically. Deficient.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] Yeah. So we'll be working on mormontherapist.com coming your way soon, hopefully. And you can, what email address can people write you at?

Natasha Parker [01:00:38] That would be natasha.parkerbcglobal.net okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:46] And I imagine your website has your email address as well.

Natasha Parker [01:00:49] Yeah, the, the blog does.

John Dehlin [01:00:51] Okay. And, and everyone's also welcome to email me@mormonstoriesmail.com and I can always pass things on to Natasha. And for now, we're going to post these podcasts, Mormon Stories website and in the Mormon Stories podcast feed. And over time we'll see whether this ends up, you know, migrating to its own either its own podcast or maybe a shared podcast where it's co produced or something to that effect. But regardless, Natasha Parker, thank you so much for giving us a taste of the goodness that is in store for us with your new endeavor.

Natasha Parker [01:01:24] Oh, thank you, John. That's very kind.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] All right, talk to you very soon.

Natasha Parker [01:01:29] Thank you. Goodbye.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an e s k y e pixton.com thank you.

Natasha Parker [01:02:23] Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down.

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