Step 4- Depression

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Mithryn

The fourth stage in recovery is known as Depression.

Arguably the longest phase in recovery, it is important to realize that this is a necessary phase.  The person is grieving not just for some metaphorical loss, but for the real loss of future potential.

The length and impact of this stage can be affected by loved ones who bring up and discuss the organization in front of the individual.

A friend, and fellow poster on reddit described it in terms of a relationship.

You learn your significant other betrayed you.  You broke it off. Whenever you go to a family gathering, your family continues to talk about that significant other.  That he/she was so nice, or what he/she has been doing lately.  They think it was your fault the relationship ended, and you were the one to call it quits, but you know about the betrayal.  When you try to talk about why it hurts, they blame you.  If you bring up the reasons you felt betrayed, they say “It doesn’t bother me”.

Hence, being around the same friends and family, if respect for emotion is not shown, can push this stage to take months or even years.
Characterized by

A feeling of laziness, or not caring.  Activities that used to be exciting drop off or are no longer interesting.  The person may dwell on the metaphysical nature of life and its purpose.

An inability to focus and sudden outbursts of sobbing are not uncommon.

Members are most likely to use people in this phase to compare themselves to when they say “The church makes me happy”,  “Sin never was happiness” and other similar phrases that imply that the person has brought this depression upon themselves.

Most common symptoms

Slower than usual response time.  Turning away things that one once loved, or people one spent a lot of time with previously.  Difficulty facing long-term decisions that can trigger thoughts about end-of-life decisions.

Reviewing the decisions in life, or re-thinking the past and wishing it different over and over is common.

This phase is the most likely to be coupled with alcohol or drug consumption.

Cutting, personal injury and thoughts of suicide may occur.

Typical phrases in conjunction with this phase

“I’m so sad, why bother with anything”

“Why does anything matter?”

“What is the point of putting effort into things?”

I don’t want to do [x] activity.  Can’t you just leave me alone

I need time by myself to think.

How to move on

The most important thing to realize about this step is that it is necessary.  The loss of the pathways connected to future plans in the brain that must be rewritten is very real and takes time to re-write.  Until they are re-written, bouts of “loss” and grieving will be felt.

Secondly, in order to move past this step, new opportunities and purpose must be found.  Many find it in another religion.  However, many, upon rejecting the LDS faith, find similar issues in other faiths.  In this case, finding meaning in projects, work, or other hobbies can be very helpful.

Exercise has been proven to reduce anxiety and depression.

Efforts to “Leave a legacy”, a physical representation of one’s goals and life that will outlive the individual or helping others who are still in the organization to cope as they leave can be very beneficial to easing the anxiety and depression during this step.

The third most important thing to realize is that this phase ends.  You may feel trapped, lost, or hopeless.  A spouse, a parent or a leader may push you back into this phase over and over; but it does get better over time.  And one day, you’ll be in a place that is so far from this, that you’ll hardly remember the pain.

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General Authority houses

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Mithryn

This post was originally posted to Reddit.  The work is not mine, but the relevance of the information made me want to repost.

Known residences for the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve apostles.

First Presidency

The 12

Sources

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Stage 3 – Bargaining at the house’s table

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Mithryn

The third stage in recovery is known as bargaining.Wikipedia says:

The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle.

People leaving the church pass through this stage as well.  The difference is that the LDS church co-opts this phase of grieving and provides bargains for the individual.  Comments such as:

“Spend an equal amount of time reading the scriptures as you do on doubting study and you will never fall away”

“Did you have enough faith?”

“Pray and increase your faith and these problems will resolve themselves”

As well as many scriptures where God directly chastises early church members for doubting, such as Martin Harris and Joseph Smith Jr. when they lost the 116 pages.

These statements and others similar to them encourage the bargaining time period to be extended.  Individuals may give up tremendous amounts of free will, time, money and other resources in order to “not lose faith” or to illustrate to themselves that God is testing them.

The encouragement of the bargaining phase to be longer is a pernicious aspect of the church.  Individuals are not encouraged to come to their own conclusion, grieve, and move on.  Nor are they encouraged to move beyond bargaining.  Trapping people in a situation feeling like they can bargain with God is not only unfair, but it is psychologically harmful.

Characterized by

The willingness to give up anything to have a confirmation of the spirit.  Ignoring real issues in order to push one’s self into “Faith”

Most common symptoms

Dramatically increasing scripture study time, suddenly trying to pay back-tithing or refusing sexual activities that were common previously.  Also sudden changes in diet related to the Word of Wisdom (I’m giving up not only caffeine, but meat as well!) can be an indicator although these can also be related to other eating disorders too.

Typical phrases in conjunction with this phase

If I pray enough, I’ll get the answer

I used to be so faithful, and now I’m not so sure

I’m sure there is an answer, I’ll ask God when I die

I doubt sometimes, but I’m doing [X] activity more now, so I try not to worry about it.

How to move on

The first step, it must be said, is to realize that despite whatever church leaders have said, God does not bargain.  The scriptures actually show little indication of a “Bargaining god”, and what they do show, instead shows a domineering personality.  God commands, He does not negotiate.

If you realized that there is no God, then you understand the futility of the bargaining and probably moved on to depression.

One method to move on is to set concrete, measurable points for God in the negotiation.  If He doesn’t keep His end of the negotiation repeatedly, one will typically move beyond the bargaining phase.  Yet many members will point out that one “Cannot tell God what to do”, pushing the person in this phase back into a limbo state.

Another method to cope while in this phase is to say that one will begin to live without the church until God intervenes.  Some percentage of people will have some occurrence that will seem like divine intervention and they will return simply because of random chance, but the vast majority of people will realize that God does not reach out or bargain, and that instead, they are going to have to determine their lives, right and wrong, etc. themselves.

Posted in Recovery | 2 Comments

Nutty Mormon History 2

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Mithryn


Powerpoint with sources: Honest-Mormon-Nuttiness-2

Posted in Nutty Mormon History, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Church Growth and the lack thereof

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

This post is a collection of attempts by redditors and others to estimate “Actual membership”, and all result in about 5 million.  This is not my work:

 

From a talk given to students at Southern Virginia University[1] :

Anyone who’s served a recent mission in Europe knows that the Church is struggling to maintain a demographic peak in those countries that was never very high. Church membership has rarely exceeded one-tenth of one percent of the population of any European country. And even in the United Kingdom, where the Church has a long historical presence, Mormons constitute only three-tenths of one percent of the population.

Now church membership, of course, is much stronger in the United States, Mormons make up about 2% of the US population, and there are notable concentrations in California, Utah and other states in the interior west. But even here there are disquieting signs of the challenges we face as a church:

membership growth in the United States has been flat during the last decade;

independent survey evidence shows that about as many people leave the church now as join it each year;

convert baptisms have been declining during this period,

and that means that most of our US growth now is internal. Perhaps most disturbing are declining activities among young adults. Our church is very successful — more successful than most religions — at retaining teenagers, an age when many other religions tend to lose their youth. But among members your age, we struggle, especially with singles. The reasons for this are complex, but one likely factor is the many ways in which western culture is growing away from LDS values and practices. President Monson described this distance last week as “a chasm.” Most of you, I think, are familiar with that divide from your own experience and you know better than I do, I think, how deep and real it is.

 

The self-reported number by the church[1] :

  • In the US: 6,229,659
  • In the territories: 39,926 (28% of the Samoan islands)

Overall self-reported numbers[2] : Those reporting more than 500,000 members are

  • The US (~6,229,659),
  • Mexico (1,273,199)
  • Brazil (1,173,533)
  • Chile (570,833)
  • Peru (508,812)
  • Philippines (661,598)

Of those, we can pull census data to find the real number of self-identifying members (+/- a few % for the two year gap between the two data sets)

  • US – 2008[3] – The religion reported[4] – 6,058,907 adults. A random sampling of self-reported numbers[5]creates an estimate of ~3,158,000 in the US. (~52% the church’s claim) Note that the US Law prohibits mandatory census data on religion, hence the USA census does not collect this information as part of the report.
  • Mexico – 2010[6] – population self-reported rate of 314,932 (~24.7% of the church’s claim)
  • Brazil – 2010[7] – population self-reported rate of 226,000 (~19% of the church’s claim)
  • Chile – 2010[8] – population self-report ~0.9% Mormon or ~148,262 (~29% of the church’s claim)
  • Peru – 2007[9] Unknown. The 2007 census has the “Other” field at 679,807. The LDS church would need to make up about 70% of this group to meet its claim. That seems unlikely.
  • Philipines – 2000[10] 181,485 in 2000[11] . Note the large year discrepancy, but they would need an additional 50% growth in this time to meet today’s numbers. Using the 2002 claim[12] of near 500,000 members, we see (~36% the church’s claim). Another interesting note is the membership total jumped from 250,000-500,000 (1991-2002) and is currently claimed at 600,000. Using natural attrition rates, It’s fair to say that this estimate is too high for today’s numbers.

Disclaimer: Please note that the above are just people who consider themselves Mormon, so the activity rate would likely be lower. And again, the years are off. This means that this report is not a precise measurement. It’s good data, but +/- a few percentage points from the actual number.

 

The numbers released officially by the church are suspect. A few other methods of making guesses have been discussed here.

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Redefining Apostate, or how to illustrate the LDS faith is in fact, apostate by using it’s own leaders quotes

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

Suppose your youth receive their impressions of church history from “pictures and stories” and build their faith upon these alleged miracles [and] shall someday come face to face with the fact that their belief rests on falsehoods, what then will be the result? Will they not say that since these things are myth and our Church has permitted them to be perpetuated …might not the other fundamentals to the actual story of the Church, the things in which it had its origin, might they not all be lies and nothing but lies? … [Some say that] because one repudiates the false he stands in danger of weakening, perhaps losing the truth. I have no fear of such results. I find my own heart strengthened in the truth by getting rid of the untruth, the spectacular, the bizarre, as soon as I learn that it is based upon worthless testimony. (Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story, p. 363)

We can learn apostasy by studying history

“A self-suggesting interpretation of history indicates that there has been a great departure from the way of salvation as laid down by the Savior, a universal apostasy from the Church of Christ”. (James Talmage, A Study of the Articles of Faith, p.182). What should we be looking for? Lost Authority, Corrupted doctrines, and a false order of religion

Doctrines were corrupted, authority lost, and a false order of religion took the place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, just as it had been the case in former dispensations, and the people were left in spiritual darkness.” (President Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, p.266).

TL;DR: This is a collection of 100% church sources that illustrate that the current church is in apostasy, corrupt and would be rejected by Joseph and the Christ Joseph believed in

*EDIT: To those who would say I ‘cherry picked” or pulled quotes out of context, there are many many quotes by Ezra Taft Benson about the church being in apostasy. I did not use most of his quotes because of the context of history. Ezra felt that many of the more touchy-feely apostles were secretly communists. Ezra had a spy watching N. Elden Tanner, David O. McKay and others throughout his time at the church. The spy watched Leonard Arrington during his opening of the church history vaults, and Ezra, Mark E. Peterson and Boyd K. Packer were responsible for shutting up church history again. *

So I thought it best not to use quotes where the apostles and prophets meant only a subsection of the apostles. I have tried to skew the quotes to only be about GENERAL apostasy, and illustrate how those principles are active today. This list, is in fact, cherry picked in FAVOR of the church. In addition, I think that Josephs “Key that will never rust” was abandoned when a minority of the apostles (Boyd, Mark and Ezra) were able to shut off history. Following three apostles over the majority has, in fact, led to today’s modern apostasy.

Continue reading →

Posted in Apologetics, Current issues | 1 Comment

Definition of a “Modest Living Allowance”

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

What I think of whenever a church leader says that the top dogs are “paid very little”:

http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2013-07-03/

Posted in Church Finances, GA Bullsh*t | Leave a comment

Joseph F. Smith and the Smoot hearings

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

The Smoot hearings are one of the more fascinating bits of Mormon history.  Reed Smoot (related to Abraham Smoot of BYU fame) was up for being a senator, but the United States decided they needed to investigate polygamy.  What resulted was many of the prominent members of the church going on trial in the public record

http://signaturebooks.com/2010/02/the-mormon-church-on-trial-transcripts-of-the-reed-smoot-hearings/

During these trials a prophet of God was put on trial and given the chance to stand up for his beliefs and tell the world what was up.  What happened was that Joseph F. Smith denied having had any revelations ever, except his testimony:

“…I have never pretended nor do I profess to have received revelations…”  – Joseph F. Smith as prophet of God

FJC editorialized: “Gentiles and Mormons, you are front to front with the proposition. Either you must accept Joseph F. Smith as the prophet of God, ordained to speak falsehoods or truth at his pleasure, ratified by God as a liar or a truth teller to meet the prophet’s needs; or, you must consider him a false, deceiving, lying, hypocritical old man, who clings to his power with selfish hands, and who fain would live out the balance of his life with his five wives …”

Now to have full context you have to understand that the mormons believed at that time, that it was no sin to lie to the federal government and so this is probably Joseph F. Smith lying through his teeth, knowing all the members would understand it.

But that stance has all kinds of issues and certainly isn’t one commonly known to members today.  Regardless, lying on trial to the United States rather than using one’s heavenly power… Bullshit.

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Quenton L. Cook and Fraud

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

http://www.slideshare.net/Mormons4justice/new-l-d-s-apostle-quentin-l

Now to clarify, Quenton’s fraud is a civil matter, and hence would have to be prosecuted in a civil court.  No jail time would be faced here.  It was dismissed by a judge that was talked to by Elder Oaks, just before Quenton was made an apostle.

The dismissal was under an expiration of statute of limitations which was unprecedented before this time.

One need not think of him counterfeiting bills in a dark basement, it’s not that kind of fraud.  It’s more the “he should have known better as an accountant”, that had it been larger, would qualify as a “Smartest guys in the Room”/Enron kind of scandal.

 

Posted in GA Bullsh*t | 2 Comments

Patriarchal blessings and psychic hot readings

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mithryn

On my mission, I was trained by a member who was famous for his blessings how to “hot read“, although at the time I thought it was just how to give a good blessing.

Since then, I’ve wondered if these things were taught en large to the partriarchs of the church.  I did find evidence of such:

Q: These interviews are important. In some instances while I was a stake president, applicants became very disturbed about the patriarch’s interview and felt he was entitled to inspiration from the Lord. If there is anything to receiving inspiration, it seems to me that a patriarch should be careful of the questions he asks so he does not mislead them. Many times they came to me disturbed about the questions asked by the patriarch.

A: You don’t need to question his morality. You can question about his family. If you know all about him, perhaps you don’t need to interview him.

So you see, the patriarchs were instructed to gather information by interview and from the bishop about the candidate before performing the blessing. People felt the interviews were too invasive some times and this is dealing with that issue, but regardless, the more they already knew about someone, the less they needed to probe before giving a blessing.

Q: It seems a patriarch might be influenced by some of the answers to the questions.

A: He should be influenced. For instance, a man comes in for a blessing; he comes from the bishop who has given him a recommend for the blessing. That does not prevent the patriarch from asking him about his family or his ancestry. It does not prevent the patriarch from asking, if he holds the priesthood. There are many questions that the patriarch can ask. He doesn’t have to quiz him regarding his conduct.

Source: DIGEST OF THE MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE PATRIARCHS OF THE CHURCH WITH THE GENERAL AUTHORITIES HELD IN THE BARRATT HALL, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1958, AT 8:00 A.M.

Posted in Early Church History (1800s) | 1 Comment