Introducing the Ten Things to Avoid in Deconstruction

Britt Hartley [00:00:00] If you are in a healthy learning process, you should be deconstructing and reconstructing all of the time. It is not a past tense event that we check off a list. I deconstructed Mormonism. Your deconstruction should keep going. After Mormonism, it should keep going. There's a lot of people that I know that it's faith crisis yesterday and right into alcohol and open marriages tomorrow. Ex Mormons tend to be adults with delayed adolescence. They have no sexual education, no sexual communication skills. They're getting drunk, drunk for the first time, making out in hot tubs, and blowing up their lives in ways that sometimes they look back and regret. No Mormon I've ever met has enough sexual education and consent education to be running a healthy, open marriage the day that they lost their faith. After reading the CES letter. We can be known for a missionary phase or being kind of a militant atheist when we're ex Mormon. And so I think we need to be aware of the missionary aspect of Mormonism that we're bringing into atheism. We're more likely to be atheists and we're more likely to be annoying in our atheism. And it comes from a good place often. Like, I want people to experience the freedom that I'm experiencing. I want people to experience the human development that I'm experiencing. But it is not. You are not the arbiter of other people's stories. And we have to sometimes remember that not only when we're Mormon, but when we're ex Mormon, too. I think that the lie of atheism is that all you have to do is walk out of the door of religion and you'll just stumble upon your best life. You'll know how to do your relationships and meaning and purpose, and you'll just kind of like, trip up upon it. What we're trying to do here is say there are problems with fundamentalism and there are problems with nihilism. Both places will kill you. Both places will kill you. And so I think you can make better decisions if you can fully see the pros and cons list of what religion provides and what religion limits. And then you can, with your partner and kids, kind of navigate your way through that.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] What are 10 things not to do if you're going through a faith or a church or a religious or even a Mormon deconstruction? I am John Dehlin, host of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm here with my partner in truth and righteousness, Margi. Hey, Margi.

Welcome and Guest Introduction with Britt Hartley

Margi Dehlin [00:02:20] Hi there.

John Dehlin [00:02:21] And we are so excited today. To have back on the show the author of the book, no Nonsense Spirituality. All the tools, no faith required. The one, the only, Britt Hartley. Hey, Britt.

Britt Hartley [00:02:35] So happy to be here, guys.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] Welcome back.

Britt Hartley [00:02:38] This is going to be great. Last time I was a little bit sick and I had to tell my story, so there were tears. This time is just going to be a fun time. I'm super, I'm super excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:02:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] And for those who don't follow us closely, we had Britt on several months ago when she was launching her new book. We asked everyone who could to buy it. A bunch of you did. You can still buy it.

Britt Hartley [00:03:02] But thank you so much for everyone who purchased the book. I told everyone that if I was able to make enough money off the book, I would take my family to Harry Potter World in California. And I was able to do that this past summer. So everyone who purchased the book had a hand in that. And Mormon Stories. Thanks so much for, you know, being a platform for the book. And just thanks to everyone who has bought it and a lot of you have appreciated it and it's just more than I even hoped for. So thanks so much for everybody's support on that one.

John Dehlin [00:03:35] Yeah, our pleasure. Britt has a Tick Tock channel and I think an Instagram channel called no Nonsense Spirituality. Is that right? And so Margi and I were attending a Thrive conference this past November, I believe, and Britt spoke at it and she basically sort of gave a talk on 10 red lights and 10 green lights. If you're going through a faith or religious or Mormon deconstruction, kind of 10 things maybe to avoid or be careful about or not to do, and maybe 10 things to do. So we loved it so much. Both Margi and I loved it so much that we said, let's bring you into studio and we'll talk through those things. So this is going to be part one of a two part series. We're going to talk about the red lights, the things to be careful about or to avoid if you are going through a faith or religious deconstruction. And then we'll follow up with part two with the green lights, things to do. And it's going to be conversational and we're just going to have a good fun chat. Just three, three friends. What do you say?

Britt Hartley [00:04:42] Yeah, it's going to be great. And I do want to give a caveat at the beginning that it's going to sound like there's going to be a lot of you listening where I go through these 10 red flags. Flags that I. That I see in my coaching practice. And you're going to be like, oh, my gosh, I am doing. I'm like nine out of 10 on this list or 10 out of 10. And I just want everyone to know that I am 10 for 10 on this list, too. Like, Right. These are things. No one goes through a faith deconstruction and looks back and says, I handled that exactly always the way that I wanted to. It's a learning process. It's a very messy process. And I know these things because I, um, sometimes wished I had done better on some of these things, too. So this is not me, like, floating above the mess saying, don't do these things. This is just things that I've learned just with myself and also just what I'm seeing in the coaching, in my coaching practice, that these are just things to be aware of. These are just things to be aware of, as you are in the mess of. Of religious deconstruction. So this is not a. It's not a shame thing. It's just we're just as friends talking to each other about things, things that we wish maybe we knew or things to watch out for. And so it's not a shame thing.

Margi Dehlin [00:05:55] I love that. And I love that, too, because I think we can take. If we haven't deconstructed, say, perfectionism, we can take that.

Britt Hartley [00:06:04] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:04] Right. And. And just apply it in a new right way.

Britt Hartley [00:06:08] Yeah, we don't want to. We don't want to do any of that shame stuff. We don't want to do any perfection stuff. This is just things that maybe I wish I would have known earlier on to watch out for, that maybe I wish I would have done a little bit differently.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:20] Great.

John Dehlin [00:06:21] We want to acknowledge that over half of our audience has never been Mormon. And while maybe our conversation and a lot of Britt's examples are probably going to come out of the Latter Day Saint or the Mormon community, we're really interested to know to what extent. I mean, we assume that y' all tune into Mormon stories, because what I like to say is the Mormon experience is the human experience. At the end of the day, we're all humans, and there's not a lot that's uniquely Mormon, even though Mormons like to think they're kind of the center of the universe.

Britt Hartley [00:06:51] We invented faith crisis. Nobody else had a dark night of soul before us.

John Dehlin [00:06:57] Where did the term dark night soul go?

Margi Dehlin [00:06:58] Special.

Britt Hartley [00:06:59] We're very special.

John Dehlin [00:07:02] So, please, in the comments and in the chats, especially if you're Never Mormon. We want to hear me too, me too. Or that's not how it worked for us. We've got these other problems. We really want to hear from you while you're at it. Please know that, number one, we couldn't do any of this without the generous donations of our sponsors, of our donors. So if you're a donor, thank you for making this possible. If you're not a monthly donor, you can just go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button, and become a monthly donor. Whether you donate or not, there are other ways you can really help us, and that's by subscribing to the channel, liking this channel, liking this episode, commenting on it, and then sharing it. That helps encourage YouTube to share it elsewhere. They call that engagement. So please comment, like subscribe liberally. And while you're at it, go subscribe and like Brits channels. You have a YouTube channel, by the way, that's got a new YouTube channel.

Britt Hartley [00:07:55] It's also no nonsense spirituality. It's, it's very new. But I've been putting some longer content on there.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] Yeah, so subscribe to her stuff too.

Britt Hartley [00:08:03] Appreciate that.

Avoid Rushing Into Major Life Changes

John Dehlin [00:08:04] All right, so what should, what should we all avoid in our faith crisis?

Britt Hartley [00:08:08] Okay, ready? Number one is a dud doozy in this world. Okay, so number one on my list is going to be no surprise to you if you followed me for some time. And that is opening your marriage the day after your faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] You're going right to swinging.

Britt Hartley [00:08:24] I'm going non monogamy coming after it. Because we talk a lot, even on Mormon stories. We talk a lot about sexual dysfunction and things that are going on in the Mormon church. But I think we need to use that same mirror and look at the ex Mormon community because there are ways that we are also not being very healthy. So this does not mean that I support like only monogamy. And I'm not a sex therapist. So I'm going to like refer to Natasha on all of that. But what I'm seeing is that there's a difference between people who are, who really understand the literature on ethical non monogamy. Because the reality that I'm seeing is ex Mormons tend to be adults with delayed adolescence. They have no sexual education, no sexual communication skills. They're getting drunk for the first time, making out in hot tubs, and blowing up their lives in ways that sometimes they look back and regret. No Mormon I've ever met has enough sexual education and consent education to be running a healthy, open marriage the day that they lost their faith after reading the CES letter. So it's just something that I'm seeing that in the ex Mormon world where we're just not having the kinds of education that we need to be doing this right away. But there's a lot of people that I know that it's faith crisis yesterday and going right into alcohol and open marriages tomorrow. And that just seems to be something that, as I work with a lot of clients, they look back and say, I really wish I would have maybe done that differently. I wasn't quite ready for that. And I think we just need to be honest about that, that that is a thing that happens.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:07] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:10:08] Not in a shame way, but in a can we help each other be better at this way. Do you have any insights on that world?

John Dehlin [00:10:16] Yeah, I mean, I think we've talked about the fact that so many people who come out of high demand religions, you know, there's high behavioral control, which means there was probably a lot of non exploration in terms of sex and sexuality. And. And a lot of these faith crisis things seem to happen in people's midlife when you're sort of sometimes experiencing dilemmas about how am I feeling in my life, how am I feeling in terms of my own personal happiness and joy, how's our marriage doing? All the kids are a little bit more grown or. Or flying the coop. And so it's this double, triple whammy.

Britt Hartley [00:11:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] That's all kind of happening at once. And if you. I think we've talked about this before, but I think there's probably a lot of people I've talked to who just never got the chance to date really, or get to know themselves or others sexually. And. And so they end up feeling I got ripped off or I didn't have that chance, or they just want to spice things up because they feel like things aren't.

Britt Hartley [00:11:30] And all of those are like super valid feelings. Right. Like. And we need to mourn that and be angry at that and mourn a natural sexual development that didn't get to happen. We just need to remember that in this space, what we do affects other people. And sometimes we have to just be more educated when we are going through these complexities, which is why we. You know, I really recommend seeing a sex therapist if you're gonna be doing something like opening your marriage.

Margi Dehlin [00:11:57] Yeah, yeah. And you actually, you and Natasha interviewed a sex therapist where, I believe. Remind me, is it Emily? Yeah. Come as you are. And. And you asked this question in particular, and I remember something to the effect of her kind of saying, you know, non monogamy is like PhD level relationship. Like it's skilled, it's sophisticated, it's really, you know, it's one thing to add it when you're very stable and you have kind of all things in check. That's kind of what I remember her answer.

Britt Hartley [00:12:36] And we just have to admit to ourselves like as, as especially an ex Mormon community that like we're not quite there or like we need some time and some education to get there.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:47] Yes.

Britt Hartley [00:12:47] Because that's a big jump. That's a big jump from like sexual repression to like sexual PhD.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:52] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:12:53] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:53] To kind of moving in that.

Britt Hartley [00:12:55] And I also want to bring up, if you ever lurk on ex morm women kind of Facebook groups or Reddit groups, you'll see that there's this common theme where ex Mormon women will perhaps want to date ex Mormon men because they, they understand, you know, how, how they grew up, but they're wanting to explore and realizing that there are a lot of women who would rather date an active Mormon or a non never Mormon than to date ex Mormons because you get all of the sexual repression and patriot or you get patriarchy that you get from Mormonism. But now the ex Mormon men have no filter. And so there's this community of women saying like the ex Mormon men are really not showing up in healthy ways. We're getting dick pics. We don't, we don't want to date them at all because it's all the patriarchy of Mormonism. But at least in Mormonism you get a filter or benevolent patriarchy. You know, you usually don't get like full on, you know, pictures and things like that. And so I just think it's something that, as we do a mirror to Mormonism and check Mormonism, I think we need to also check ourselves in that space too.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:04] Yeah, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] One final question I had is if we, if we talk about ethical non monogamy as PhD level stuff, I, you know, there's a group of people that will say it's, it's the best thing ever. But there's another group of people that will say it almost always seems to blow up. And it's the thing that people do.

Britt Hartley [00:14:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:24] When they feel like their marriage isn't working and it's the thing they end up doing right before they get divorced.

Britt Hartley [00:14:29] Yeah. I don't want to say about that.

John Dehlin [00:14:31] PhD means it's the ideal.

Britt Hartley [00:14:33] We're probably not going to mean like, like it's hard.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:38] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:14:38] You're right. What it requires. The communication skills and sexual education requirements are much more demanding. So I ask therapists who work with the Mormon community, I always ask them this question. There's a few that I ask because I just like to get. I like to dip my toes into things and take the temperature of things. And I'll ask them, of all the clients that you have, of the Mormon clients that you have, which ones are doing something like an open marriage or ethical non monogamy in healthy ways? And more often than not, the answer to that is zero. And so to your point, John, like, we need to, we need to be honest about that. I know, too. I've always said publicly that I've only known two. Where I look at it and I say this seems to be very healthy. That's now down to one for me. Of all the people that I know who have tried, you know, gone into this space, I know one where it's like the communication, the, the consent, the support, the therapy, the, the just all of it. It's, it's just healthy across the board. I only know one and I know hundreds, hundreds of ex Mormons who have, you know, opened the store.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] I would say the same thing, that even I can count a couple people who are like vociferous advocates for it, coaching others, supporting others, where it Bl them too. So I don't even know if I can name one person that I know who's, who's doing this. So just be. It's not just like, make sure you're in a good place. It's more like almost always this blows up in your face. So it's super risky.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:17] And if you do it at all, know that it's unlikely to work. And it certainly is probably not going to work without a professional being involved.

Britt Hartley [00:16:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] Okay.

Britt Hartley [00:16:28] And like, let's.

Margi Dehlin [00:16:29] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:16:29] And I just think we need to be honest about that reality. All right, Ready for the next one?

John Dehlin [00:16:33] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:16:34] All right. The next one I have on my list is providing order and structure for kids. And this is something, again, I think, that the ex Mormon community is really struggling with, because what happens is when you are in a very nuanced place, you've almost gotten the benefit, whatever that may have been for you. A lot of people that I meet had benefits being being raised Mormon in childhood. Not everyone. Sometimes it's, it's a lot of trauma and sexual abuse and things where it was not a good thing for you. But I would say the majority of the clients that I have look back and say there were good things about my childhood being raised Mormon. I had some moral education, I had mentors, I had community and identity and belonging. These are things are essential for children. They need a nest period. And then later on in life you deconstruct and you can kind of fly the nest. And that seems to be just like a very natural and healthy way to go about it. The problem is it's very difficult when you're in a nuanced space to then go back to a black and white world to raise your children. Because children need more order and structure than you do when you're, when you're nuanced. They need boundaries. They need good guys to be good guys and bad guys to be bad guys. Whereas me, a nuanced space, all of my, you know, heroes were, were, you know, are troubled in some way. Like they're complex. Like, you know, heroes are complex and villains are complex. It's all complex. So for me, I'm seeing that it can be really difficult for us as a community to come back to our kids and give them the nest period that they need. And so what we're seeing with ex Mormon children is the parents seem to be able to figure out it out and do okay, but the kids didn'. And, and then also just like with things deconstructing in society in general, not being able to, for example, own a house or, or other markers of development and into adulthood, they're missing all that. We're just seeing such high levels, even in the ex Mormon community, of depression and anxiety in our kids. And I think it's just something that we need to be more open and honest about that. Hey, it's great that you are nuancing and you're out here doing this really complex stuff, but you have got to come back to some level and structure in black and white for kids because kids need black and white before they can do gray. And that is hard for us when black and white was triggering.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:02] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:19:02] It's hard for us when good guys are good guys and bad guys are bad guys because we got stuck in some of these development places. So it can be triggering for us. But it's something that kids need or else their depression and anxiety is going to be much higher. And I'm not like doing this perfectly by any means. I have four kids and I'm trying to figure out how to raise them outside of religion. It's hard, but I think we take just at least need to be honest about, like, hey, this is hard.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:28] Yeah, yeah, I love this because I feel like, there's plenty of research around this, around the importance of routines and rituals with young kids. And also what I'm kind of hearing here is child centered, as opposed to, say, the parent centered parenting of. And I, I really, I. I can see why this is a. This is something that's challenging and maybe requires a level of awareness and skill for a parent. Because I think when you have an experience with something that you feel betrayed by it, you feel like on some level it kept you from a reality, then it can feel like a gift to give it to your kids. That what you're offering by offering all this nuance and all this is actually freedom for them. So, you know, all the love and all the love and softness around this thing. But what I'm hearing is kind of maybe really conceptualize the fact that children's needs may be different than yours.

Britt Hartley [00:20:33] Yeah. And then watching your triggers in that. So like you were saying, like, this can be a very natural process. Like, if you're a science teacher, it can be pretty easy, I think, to go back and say, yes, in kindergarten, we teach them that birds fly. Is that, is it more complex than that? Yes, but that is the truth that's most appropriate for the science model of that age. And then they, you know, but the problem becomes, like you were saying, where if you were in a church where you were told, birds all, you know, birds always fly, it will always be this way. And then you have to go back and teach your kids that, then it can be triggering. It can be very triggering to go back to that place. And I think as a community, we're struggling with our triggers to be able to go back and give our kids the order and structure they need.

Navigating Religion and Parenting After Leaving Faith

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Yeah, I love this topic. So many things to explore. Like, the Pew foundation has been tracking the. The nuns. Right. People who, in the United States who no longer affiliate with any religious tradition. And for several decades, the nuns were growing from like 10% to 15 to 20 to 25. I think it almost got up to 30 at some point. 30% of the people in the US were adults, no longer affiliating with any religious tradition. For the first time ever in the past year or two, the nuns ticked down and the religiously affiliated ticked up, which means in the past year or two, we're seeing a resurgence in religiosity. And my understanding is it's happening at least to some degree, with younger people.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] So there's another pod. There's a podcast I listen to called Honestly with Barry Weiss, and she's a Former New York Times reporter and she recently had a, a, a debate between like Michael Shermer and Hersi Ali. Ali. Yeah. And they're debating whether religion is a good thing.

Britt Hartley [00:22:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:29] And they keep talking about the rates of depression and anxiety and self harm and suicidality with youth. And the faithful people make a really strong case that kids need religion. And, and, and part of the reason why so many kids are struggling are because they don't have it. Now the secular folk are, are saying no, no, no, it's not that it's screen time, it's, it's social media that's the problem, not the lack of religion. But I wonder what you recommend to.

Britt Hartley [00:22:59] Yeah, I have a lot to say on this. This is like actually my specialty. My specialty and my master's program was Gen Z spirituality. So I'm super interested in all of this. And like you said, there has been a downtick in, in the nuns, but that's going to be mostly young men. And so what we're happening now is. What's happening now is something that I never would have predicted 20 years ago when I started to get into religious studies, which is when I started studying religion, it was true across the board that women outperformed men in religiosity. They were more likely to go to church, read scripture, pray, raise their children if the spouse wasn't attending. The women were more likely to take their kids without the husband and vice versa. And it was across all religions, across all religion it was women who were really had the signs of higher religiosity. And what we're seeing now is that Gen Z men are far more likely to be conservative, Gen Z women far more likely to be liberal. And a huge gap. The gap.

John Dehlin [00:24:03] You mean politically?

Britt Hartley [00:24:04] Politically, politically. So it's a 30 point gap. We've never seen that kind of gap between the two genders before. We're seeing it in Gen Z. And so the young men are returning to church, turning to the order and structure and really sometimes the only safe place where a man can sing or a man can check up on each other or talk to other men, that seems to be happening more at church than anywhere else. Whereas the women are much more likely to be able to form community outside of religion. They're more likely to be liberal, they're more likely to get into astrology and tarot and some of these other spiritual tools. And so we're seeing for the first time in history where Gen Z men are going completely in one direction, where they're going back to organized religion. Religion, and they're going to. And they're leaning conservative, and the women are going more towards feminist forms of spirituality, witchy stuff, and are much more liberal. And they're actually having a hard time, like, dating each other because there's a pretty big difference there. And it's going to be really interesting to watch. But for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she. She was a big player in this, in this, in this debate because she comes from Islam and she's a huge, you know, critic of Islam, and she spent time with, you know, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. They're all friends with her. And then she goes through a period of deep, deep depression. Like, what? She doesn't have enough resources in atheism, and she's struggling. And so she just converts to Christianity. And everybody's like, wait, weren't you, like, best friends with all of the top atheists? And she essentially said it wasn't like Jesus came down and told her, you know, to join Christianity. It was more so that she didn't have enough resources in the secular world to deal with, with the deep existential depression that she was in. And so for the secular world, the secular world will say it's not religion specifically, because it doesn't actually matter what the beliefs are. It's what religion is a vessel for. Religion is a vessel for meaning and purpose and awe and transcendence and community and all of these things. And so we just need to replace all of those things. We don't need to necessarily jump back to religion. Whereas people who more like the Ben Shapiro types would say, we just need to go back to religion. We're struggling out here. We can't, we can't do this in the secular world. And that's a debate that's much bigger than me. I'm not, I'm not sure if we can replace everything in the secular world, but I sure want to try because I, for me, personally, I never want to believe in something that I don't believe in in order to get access to these tools, which is, of course, what my book is about.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:39] That's right. And it's like the perfect time, because I feel like that's what actually I

Britt Hartley [00:26:43] really did in the book, break down. This is what religions do. Here's how you can get these tools into your life without having to believe things that you just don't believe.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:50] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] Well, here's my hot take, if it's okay. My hot take is I didn't like the framing of which is the right answer. No. Religion or religion. Yeah, what. What I was feeling, and people may not expect this from me, or they may totally expect this from me, is if, if kids are finding value in religion, they should be supported. And if kids are not finding value in religion, then they should, you know, be supported in finding what works for them. But I, I don't like the framing of a debate where one is the right answer, because I literally believe that there are some brains that are just skeptical and questioning and doubting or independent, and religion just may never work for that person, male or female.

Britt Hartley [00:27:36] And on the flip side, right, some people, we know, the brains that tend towards fundamentalism, they need more order and structure to psychologically function than the person who is the, is the skeptic. And so, like, maybe my path is a little bit too chaotic for someone whose brain needs a little bit more than that. And, like, we just need to be gentle about that a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] And so going back to ex Mormon parents, so one of the most common reactions we've seen from ex Mormon parents is like, oh, we gotta, we gotta get our kids out. We gotta make our kids leave. Oh, what if my kids go on a mission? What if my kids get married in the temple? What if they stay faithful? And I always ask, is that really the worst possible thing is if your kid ends up a devout Mormon? Like, what if it's working for them? Can you give them space to. Because sometimes kids can get yanked out of a religion and they can kind of crash, whereas the religion maybe, it maybe might have been what they need. How do you, how do you feel? How does that sit with you?

Britt Hartley [00:28:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] Thinking the idea that for some, that might be the very best thing for them.

Britt Hartley [00:28:41] It's something that I've come around to. More something that I say is that the difference between the most deconstructed Mormon, someone like a Dan Weatherspoon who's just doing beautiful stuff with the religion, honestly, and. And the most spiritual athe atheist, like, come, like, has ritual and awe and, and all of these things in their life. The difference between the most deconstructed religious person and the most spiritual atheist is like a hair. And maybe that's an important hair to both sides. But, like, what we're trying to do here is say there are problems with fundamentalism and there are problems with nihilism. Both places will kill you. Both places will kill you.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:20] Right?

Britt Hartley [00:29:21] Both places will kill you. Your, like, destroy the human development of your kids too, Right? And so we need to be somewhere in the middle. I come more from the secular side, because I'm more of a skeptic type and there are aspects of a religion that just don't work for me. But if someone deconstructs to that place something like secular Jews have been able to do this really well, where it's, it's totally normal in New York City to have a rabbi who's an atheist. He's deconstructed so many truth claims after so many, you know, so many thousands of years that they've kept a lot of the cult but dropped a lot of the truth claims on the way, along the way. And so that's kind of what we're, that's, that's the place that we all want to get to. Now if you deconstruct religion and you're nuancing things to be able to get there or you're building up from the other side, you end up in kind of the same place, which is a place where we tend to do best in our human development when we have some order and structure, but with room to grow. And you get that in the middle of those two extremes.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:19] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] What about parents parenting?

Britt Hartley [00:30:21] What about parenting for, for pulling kids out. I really like this idea of. And I'll, I'll talk about this later on in my list of. I think, like you say, I think we get into trouble when we treat religion as all bad because when we do that, then we can't look at the list of what religion is doing and what, you know, good and bad. And then you can sit with your partner and your kids and navigate the best way for you to do in. In that first, for a few years for me in my own marriage, because I was in a mixed faith marriage, we went to church every other week and that worked for us for a couple years. My husband's now out and so we do church at home. But it's, it's been, we've navigated that as we went because there's some things that we still wanted to, to be a part of that was a benefit to us. And so I think you can make better decisions if you can fully see the pros and cons list of what religion provides and what religion limits. And then you can, with your partner and kids, kind of navigate your way through that.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:24] I love it.

Britt Hartley [00:31:25] Which is more complex than just saying it's all like, it's all yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:28] And it's more, I, I feel like it's couched more in really seeing the reality for you and with an overlay even of each Child. Because I think it can be very different within families, child to child. If you have an LGBTQ child, the harm. That harm kind of aspect is going to be very different.

Britt Hartley [00:31:47] Right.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:47] Than, for example, if you have a son. That's.

Britt Hartley [00:31:50] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:51] Anyway. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:31:52] Yeah. For gay kids, when you're looking at that pros and cons list, I'm more likely to say, like, let's. Let's maybe take that. Take that. Take the family out. Yeah. But it is complex. If you have a kid that's about to go on a mission and that's what they want to do, we have to, as Mormon parents, let go of this idea that in Mormon parenting, we are ahead of our kids and our kids follow us, and we have to allow our kids to be on their own journeys. And that can be hard, too, because their journey may be different than yours. They may not be triggered by things that you are. And that's a very difficult place to be.

Margi Dehlin [00:32:28] Yeah. For me, just. And I know we're. You know, we could talk with you all day.

Britt Hartley [00:32:33] I know this is so fun, but

Margi Dehlin [00:32:35] I do feel like, for me, there are things that are more important than just you're in religion or you're. You're kind of out of religion. Like that idea of having children have practices that allow them to connect with themselves, to advocate for themselves, you know, is. Is something that, to me would be my. Or to critically think about ideas or as things come, to kind of teach some of those skills or reflect those skills in a family culture. I don't know. There are just some things that I think are. Are more important to me.

Britt Hartley [00:33:12] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:13] Than say. Yeah. That you participate in a religion or not.

John Dehlin [00:33:18] And I'll just end by saying, for this topic, I've seen way better outcomes when parents are happily supportive of their kids in their own spiritual journeys, even if that means the kids are orthodox believing devout Mormons than parents trying to nitpick and push and nag and tug their kids out of faith. I've just seen better outcomes personally. So try not to. To put your fears and anxieties about religion on your kids if it's working for them. That's just my.

Britt Hartley [00:33:49] There's a reason that Richard Rohr says that nobody does first half of life better than Mormons, but nobody does second half of life worse.

Margi Dehlin [00:33:57] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:33:57] There's a reason he says that he works with a lot of religious people. That's right. And so, yeah, I. I think we can, but that. That requires, again, us to be in charge of our own triggers, which is hard because There's a lot to be angry about and you're hurting and it's a lot. It's a lot valid. It's totally valid. All right, the next one on my list is psychedelics chasing, which I may be just speaking individually here since. Since.

Cautions Around Psychedelics in Faith Transitions

John Dehlin [00:34:23] Oh, no, this is not every faith crisis narrative we get these days has a psychedelic component.

Britt Hartley [00:34:28] Not everybody I know, but you guys don't. You guys don't partake. And so I'll be doing. But I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure you hear everybody talking about it. So I am a fan of psychedelics for various things. Getting in touc your inner child, releasing things, being held in your body, depression boosts, turning your ego brain off, seeing what's going on in your subconscious, facing fears, having spiritual experiences outside of religious context. But something that I'm seeing in the ex Mormon community is what's called psychedelics chasing. Psychedelics chasing is when you're not doing this with a guide, you're not integrating your trip experiences into your life. And what starts to happen is your drug life starts to be over here and your regular life starts to be over here. And what happens is, especially because this, these can be such peak experiences, they can be very pleasurable, they can be a time of great intuition. It can feel like 10 years of therapy, but you can almost get addicted to it. And so what I'll see is people have a positive experience with psychedelics. This is of course the ex Mormon caricature, is that the day after your faith crisis, you open your marriage, you get tattoos, you go order your first coffee, and then you go do mushrooms. And it's almost like a rite of passage at this point. But what I'm seeing is some people will have a positive kind of first psychedelics experience and then they start chasing. So when am I going to go to Costa Rica and do ayahuasca? When's my next retreat? When's the next time that I'm going to do this? And they're not integrating those trips into your life. What psychedelics are supposed to do when you're doing them healthily is they open doors in your mind that you can then learn how to walk into when you're sober. So the point of psychedelics is to use them to open up a door, to help you process things, help you reset PTSD and depression, help you remember what it was like to just be a kid. It just opens these doors. But to do them healthily long term, you want to be able to step into that room with your sober Mind you want to be able to, to use psychedelics less and less. And sometimes in the ex Mormon community, we start using them more and more and then we start hanging out with other people who are doing this thing. And now our life and our family and our job is over here and our drug life and our drug brain and our whatever is over here and we now we're chasing and we need to be able to integrate those into one life. You need to learn how whatever state you get into on drugs, you can get to off drugs. It's just that psychedelics is a tool, it's a shortcut that you can use. So I really recommend finding guides which sometimes we're not doing enough in the ex Mormon community. And also be aware of a guide will help you integrate your trip into your life and then learn how to get to those places with your sober mind so that you're not becoming dependent on these drugs or chasing these drugs in a way that will start to disconnect your life.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:27] Yeah, yeah. From my understanding too, it feels like the studies that are, are being done now and being referred to, you know, that talk about psychedelics and all the benefits in, in kind of healing from really complicated traumas and, and mind states is that the reintegration piece is part of that research.

Britt Hartley [00:37:53] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:53] Having actual, you know, sessions afterwards and before. So it's, it sounds like it's like a very. That reintegration, it really is key. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:38:05] Yeah. Have you guys watched the show Severance yet?

Margi Dehlin [00:38:08] Yes.

Britt Hartley [00:38:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:09] Yep. We're caught up.

Britt Hartley [00:38:10] Yeah, you're caught up. Oh, wait, is, is the finale today? We'll talk about that later.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Yes, it is.

Britt Hartley [00:38:16] Oh, but yeah, it can almost start to like sever your brain where if you're not reintegrating, you'll start really having two different kinds of lives and people will start to get to get almost psychologically unhinged if you're not doing, if you're not having someone to help you reintegrate these experiences. And so for me, psychedelics has been helpful. For me, I've had a resistant, you know, treatment. Resistant depression. I have not had dissociative depression since, since being able to use this tool. But I have only done my first kind of solo dive in the past year. But I've, I've. Because I've always done it with a guide and with reintegration therapy afterwards. And I, I'm glad that I, I did it that way because I can see where people can start to, to get a little bit unhinged or start chasing These experiences in a way that isn't really integrating their life.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:16] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:39:17] So something to be aware of. Please find. Um, and of course, like, it's hard to do. It was probably three years from the time I decided that I wanted to do it till I found a guide that I trusted. And however long you need to wait or whisper around and ask people to be able to do it in a healthy way, I recommend you waiting rather than jumping and doing it yourself. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:37] Really good book is how to Change youe Mind.

Britt Hartley [00:39:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:40] Michael Pollan. He also has a Netflix series about it as well.

Britt Hartley [00:39:44] Yeah. Good stuff. All right, next one is Clinging to New Beliefs. I actually, I mentioned Mormon stories when I. When I did the. Thrive on this one in a bad

The Danger of Clinging to New Belief Systems

John Dehlin [00:39:55] way or a good way?

Britt Hartley [00:39:57] I don't know. We'll see.

Margi Dehlin [00:39:58] We'll see.

Britt Hartley [00:39:59] I'm curious to see now that I can talk to you about it.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:01] Give it to us.

Britt Hartley [00:40:02] Now that I can talk to you about it. I want to see how you think. Yeah, you. You did this one. So, you know, on Mormon stories we

Margi Dehlin [00:40:10] talk a lot about.

Britt Hartley [00:40:11] About the bite model. And leaving a cult is when you are most highly at risk for joining another cult because your brain wiring is still culty. It's looking for something to just plug in to the wiring that you already have. So I am not at all shaming the fact that most of us deconstruct by degrees. Most of us don't go from Mormon one day to atheist the next day. Like, there's usually like deconstruct like a nuanced Mormon and then maybe like a nuanced Christian and maybe like a UU or a secular Christian. Like there's stops along the way and I made those stops too. So I'm not at all shaming that. Like, to deconstruct takes time, but we do need to be aware of our brains, like wanting to cling on to something that's new. A common one that I see is if you have a fear of death and you were in Mormonism and then you have a faith crisis, the next day you'll find yourself like really getting into nde, near death experiences, studies and the now there may be truth behind all of this, that maybe there's a part of our consciousness that lives on after we die. I'm not saying that there's not, but the reason that they're doing that is because the brain is looking for, I need some new thing to believe in that helps me to cheat death. I need something to plug in here. And we have to Notice our brain doing that. Our brain is looking for where's my new prophet? Where's my new community? Where's my new way to cheat death? Where's my new belief system? And we have to sometimes just sit with, with not knowing and sit with the complexity a little longer or else we're just going to jump onto the next ship and then have to deconstruct 10 years later off of that ship too. And the reason I brought up Mor is because I saw you do this a little bit with Sandra Tanner because Sandra Tanner went from being very critical of the Book of Mormon and fantastic critique of the Book of Mormon and she doesn't seem to apply the same level of technique to the Bible. And you called her on it one time and then you backed off, I think out of respect. But it's something that I sometimes see Mormons do where they will not use the same level of critique with their new belief system because they haven't really decons, they haven't fully deconstructed. They've just jumped to another ship. Right. And that can be fine. Like it, like that's fine if you find found home in another place. But I just think we need to be aware that the brain is going to want to do that so that you can be at least aware of your own thinking when that is happening.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:36] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:42:37] So yeah. Did you, do you remember when you did that with Sandra?

John Dehlin [00:42:39] I've done it twice with her. At least I did it recently in an interview with Nemo for the second time.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] But that was super uncomfortable.

Margi Dehlin [00:42:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:48] But you know that goes back to like the believing brain.

Britt Hartley [00:42:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] Like you find out so often that when somebody has deep beliefs. Michelle Stone, I don't know if you saw, I did an interview with her. She's known as being sort of like the leader in the. Joseph Smith never practiced polygamy.

Britt Hartley [00:43:05] Oh no, I did see some of that. Yeah. And I can't listen to the whole thing of that.

John Dehlin [00:43:09] No, I can't. But she's, she's had a lot of trauma and you know, and that, that doesn't mean that people only believe because of sure things that I cherry pick that I notice about their lives. But yeah, I, I, I think of the same type of thing when we talk about non monogamy or psychedelics. The thing I was going to say about psychedelics I didn't get a chance to say is yes, everyone that I've talked to who's done psychedelics says it's changed their lives. Not everyone that I see who claims psychedelics has changed their lives. Can I actually see myself a meaningful difference in their life? In other words, if I'm turning my skeptical brain on to psychedelics, it seems like sometimes psychedelics flips the switch in your brain that signals to you your life has been changed without you actually learning the lessons to change your behavior. And so yeah, you, you had the chemicals come to your brain that say, oh, my life's changed now. But sometimes people haven't really changed much.

Britt Hartley [00:44:21] And that's where reintegration comes into it. To put this into like if your psychedelics experience isn't showing up in a way that your partner notices that your marriage is different and that you're a kinder, more compassionate person, then you have to haven't, you know, like you haven't reintegrated that. And so I'll see that often with men like the male gurus who are, who are doing psychedelics and they're still just like assholes to the women in their life. And it's like, no thanks.

John Dehlin [00:44:45] Yeah, good. And, and that's kind of where I was going is like, and this isn't a pick up psychedelics because when my friends tell me it's changed our lives, I want to believe them. And I tend to believe them. And I've heard people talk about psychedelics. It's the medicine. And the medicine told me this and the medicine told me that. Or my, my guide told me that my dad sexually molested me when I was a baby. And they believed the guide who has no idea whether that actually happened.

Britt Hartley [00:45:16] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:17] Because the guide's not being ethical.

Britt Hartley [00:45:19] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] And so they're actually memories in the person.

Britt Hartley [00:45:23] It took me so long to find a guy that I trusted because you are in a very vulnerable place. And I'm very like, I'm very non woo. I wanted to do this in a place where someone kind of understood that and wouldn't want to, to like plant beliefs in me when I'm in that state. So it took me a long time to find a guide that I trusted.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:39] So whether it's yoga instructors, podcasters, you know, psychedelic gurus, psychedelics themselves, non monogamy, whatever. I love this idea of keep your skeptical brain.

Britt Hartley [00:45:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] But then you're deconstructing everything all the time and that's not fun either. Right. Where's the magic? Where's the magic in life? Where's the magic if you're skeptical of everything?

Britt Hartley [00:46:00] Yeah. I find kind that my skepticism really keeps the magic alive for me. But I may be, I may Be alone in that. People accuse me all the time of, like, you're just so skeptical of everything. Because I'll. I'll be skeptical of everything on my social media, and people will be like, no, don't take this one from me. And it's like. But for me, the, the magic of what reality is is more magical than our stories about it. And that's just. And so for me, it's a very magical life over here in cold atheism.

John Dehlin [00:46:29] I think we're so with you. I don't identify as an atheist, but, like, I want to swim in reality. I want my feet planted firmly on the ground.

Britt Hartley [00:46:38] It's magical. We are spinning through. We are flying through space right now, and sound waves of what you're saying are hitting my ear, and then they'll resonate in my body. It's magic. It's magic to me. All of this is magic.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:50] I am with you. I'm with you with that. I do think it's funny, as you were talking, talking with, just to support this point, go back to this point, but it feels like, even sometimes unchecked, let's just say within Mormonism, there's this whole place for spiritual experiences and what it means about you to have a spiritual experience. It's kind of like that you're. You're really virtuous, that you're select, that you're right. That you can see if you don't actually deconstruct the structure of that. The idea of, like, then I do think mushrooms move into almost a plug for.

Britt Hartley [00:47:29] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:29] Many people who maybe never had spiritual experiences within Mormonism and were kind of felt like they missed out or even felt some shame around that. Here's a guarantee I have not thought

Britt Hartley [00:47:42] of that connection before. I'm gonna have to think about that more. But, but yeah, there's one guy that I know who, who talks to me about, like, the 16 dimensions that you can travel through. And I'm like, buddy, like, we just constructed a new, you know, you, you very quickly just constructed a new spiritual system where you're very special and you know all the things. And I'm. I'm a little bit skeptic, skeptical of, like, how, how your brain did that.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:07] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [00:48:08] Right. So, yeah, I'll have to think about that more. But that's a good point.

John Dehlin [00:48:10] How about chakras?

Britt Hartley [00:48:13] Yeah, I'm, I'm.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:14] I'm.

Britt Hartley [00:48:15] I'm.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] They're sacred to people.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:17] They are.

John Dehlin [00:48:17] What I dislike chakras. People get out, get after me.

Britt Hartley [00:48:20] I know. And we have to remember that some of these things are. It's like the tool helps regardless of if the tool is true or not.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:29] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:48:29] So some of these things we know. Yeah, like, we know some of these things. We have science even that shows something like Reiki can. Can help.

John Dehlin [00:48:37] Really?

Britt Hartley [00:48:37] I didn't know. Yeah, we have some science session, but it's.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:40] Could.

Britt Hartley [00:48:40] We don't know if it's because it's something magical or one person is spending an hour of their time tending to you with their attention. Like, we know that that's very powerful for the body. So some of these things are. Are. It's like we, as humans, we. We have stories and we put imagery to things that really are tools at the base level. And so we have to kind of try to get the tool with as little dogma as possible. Is. Is kind of my approach to.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:06] I really love that and I do kind of think it's. I enjoy this aspect, but, like, you can take research, and I think it's important to see where the research falls on some of these things. I think it's an important part of critical thinking. But then there's placebo. Like, just throw in placebo into our. Like the fact that if we believe something is helpful.

Britt Hartley [00:49:28] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:28] That it's a very powerful. That's a powerful element. And I just think the one that

Britt Hartley [00:49:32] I get in trouble the most for online is gonna. Going after astrology. Because we have so many studies on astrology to see if the planets are really influencing human behavior or events or patterns in some way. And we have so many studies that we have meta studies. And there is just nothing. There is nothing there. But I know people who used it as a tool almost like mythology, almost like Greek mythology or some other thing. And it did help them. Them to look inward. It worked as a mirror for them, even if the mirror isn't kind of really grounded into hard science.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:10] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:50:10] And so we have to sometimes separate these things that. Like that there are tools that are helpful. But why is it helpful? Oh, it's acting as a mirror. Well, is there a mirror that I can use where I don't have to believe things about planets that I just don't?

Margi Dehlin [00:50:23] And that's.

Britt Hartley [00:50:23] That's kind of always my approach.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:24] I love that.

John Dehlin [00:50:25] So explore with education, but don't check your.

Britt Hartley [00:50:29] Keep your wits about you. Keep your wits about you. Okay. All right, next one is the missionary phase. So there is a reason that Sam Harris, who deals with a lot of atheists, and he says that no one is more ardent in their atheism than ex Mormons. And he knows a lot of atheists. And, you know, atheist Mormons is not a very high percentage, but we stand out to people. And one of the reasons that we do that is we can apply the same zeal that we had in Mormonism of wanting to save people, and we'll just transfer that over to the other side. I think this is one that you point out a lot on Mormon stories, that we have to stop trying to save each other from the other sides or. Or trying to send each other articles to pull the other person to our side on both sides of that equation. And so we can be known for a missionary phase or being kind of a militant atheist when we're ex Mormon. Ex Mormons are also more likely to be atheists than other groups that deconstruct. And so I think we need to be aware of the missionary aspect of Mormonism that we're bringing into atheism. We're more likely to be atheist and we're more likely to be annoying in our atheism because we tend to have a missionary mindset that we had in Mormonism where we want to. And it comes from a good place often. Like, I want people to experience the freedom that I'm experiencing. I want people to experience the human development that I'm experiencing, but it is not. You are not the arbiter of other people's stories. And we have to sometimes remember that. Not even. Not only when we're Mormon, but when we're ex Mormon, too.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:08] That's great.

John Dehlin [00:52:09] I have to ask this. He is. If you had to give a percentage of ex Mormons that become atheists. For me, it's less than 50%. For you, is it more?

Britt Hartley [00:52:19] No, it'd still be less than 50%, but it's more than other religions who deconstruct. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] But we shouldn't equate ex Mormonism with atheism.

Britt Hartley [00:52:27] No, no, I, I wouldn't say it's.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:29] It's.

Britt Hartley [00:52:30] I wouldn't say that it's more than 50%, although it is significantly more than other religions. And some of that is just. Just because, for example, in Christianity, so much of that is couched in. In mystery. Whereas in Mormonism, I see how scripture gets made. I see how prophets become prophets. I see how myths become manuals. I see all of that happen. And it.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:54] It's.

Britt Hartley [00:52:55] And so Mormons are more likely to step away from religion and God altogether.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] Yeah. So be careful in that.

Britt Hartley [00:53:02] You're right.

John Dehlin [00:53:02] Yes. Secular missionary zeal. Be Careful trying to pull people out, out of religion. You know, sometimes believers try and blame Mormon stories for taking people out of religion. Nobody who's really in, in a faith position is going to listen to a six or eight hour long form story about someone's faith deconstruction. People come to Mormon stories to help them process what's already happened. A loss of faith that's already happened.

Britt Hartley [00:53:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] And that's just a long way of saying, saying it really doesn't work to deconvert people. People have to go through their own process. If you feel like your words or actions have helped someone deconstruct, it's kind of a coincidence. It's not that you really did it, it's just that you were there at the right time. People have to do it on their own. The only other thing I'll say is that there are no more ardent missionaries than psychedelic missionaries, man. So many psychedelic missionaries sacrament that we're

Britt Hartley [00:53:59] trying to give everyone.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:00] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:00] Again, not to diss on psychedelics, but it's a thing.

Britt Hartley [00:54:04] Yeah, yeah. There, there is a brand of atheist psychedelics missionaries that are on a mission that I think some, you know, it's not most ex Mormons, but there's enough of those that we need to say like hey guys, I think we're taking some of our Mormonism with us here.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:19] Yeah. And I see too this deconstruction piece that you talk about as well being in that, that part of like not special but like we know something. We know something that you don't know.

Britt Hartley [00:54:31] Oh yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:32] And now I feel this sense of like responsibility to save you from what you don't.

Britt Hartley [00:54:36] I know the secrets. The plants have taught me the secrets.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:39] Right.

Britt Hartley [00:54:40] And now I'm gonna share this very

Margi Dehlin [00:54:42] Mormon that's still very Mormon.

Britt Hartley [00:54:44] Still very Mormon. And it comes from a place of compassion. Just like I think when we were Mormons too. But we have to be aware of like how this is landing with people.

Avoiding Conformity and Finding Secular Community

Margi Dehlin [00:54:52] Yeah. And another other deconstruction I could see at play there as well is just, you know, in Mormonism being the same is safety. Like that conformity piece. It's, it's actually, it can be love, it can be safety. It can be. And so when you, when you maybe you know, transition out, that is something you want again. You want your spouse to be like you, you want your children to be

Britt Hartley [00:55:20] like you, you want your, and you

Margi Dehlin [00:55:22] have this visceral, visceral experience. I think sometimes that difference being different is a threat. Having someone have different beliefs than you, that is that Is something.

Britt Hartley [00:55:33] Because we're taught that love and safety is only when you're enmeshed.

Margi Dehlin [00:55:36] That's right.

Britt Hartley [00:55:37] Yeah. No, that's a good point to add.

John Dehlin [00:55:40] Yeah. I'd say the two most. You tell me if you agree. We've reviewed like 750 applications to Mormon Stories to be on Mormon Stories since we initiated the application process. I would say the two most common narratives are number one, I was sexually abused and I want to call out my abuser. We get multiple a day on those. But the other is I took psychedelics and I want to teach everybody about

Margi Dehlin [00:56:06] how

John Dehlin [00:56:08] there's a dark and all. Are those the two most common? Margi, Are there more? Those are pretty common though, right?

Margi Dehlin [00:56:16] We do have a lot of. Of those things. Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:20] Maybe they go hand in hand.

Britt Hartley [00:56:22] I don't know about that. Yeah, but there it is something that we just need to.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] I mean, people who have been abused often find healing in psychedelics that, that

Britt Hartley [00:56:31] I think we can link to. Yeah, the, the. It's something like 80% PTSD reduction. So yeah, I, I definitely encourage with the PTSD p. Like PTSD and then working to get off your SSRI so that you. For some people then they go back on their SSRIs, but a large percentage don't like. For me, I haven't since. So, yeah, stuff to be aware of. All right, next one. Should we keep going here?

Margi Dehlin [00:57:00] Yeah, keep going.

Britt Hartley [00:57:01] Next one is, I think we've already talked about this one, so we might just skim through this one. But just not recognizing the good in religion which we've already spoken to. I was on a TikTok live with an ex Mormon group where the wom. There was a woman in the group who was absolutely floored at the idea that there is any good in religion. Like this was actually like shocking knowledge to her. And there are certain ex Mormon rabbit holes where we're just bashing every aspect of religion. But we have to remember that we have co evolved with religion. As philosopher Daniel Dennett says, religion is like music. We've co evolved with it. The music of today is different than the music of a thousand years ago and a thousand years before that. We've had it as long as we've been here human. And so there is, you know, if I were to challenge myself, if I were to play chess against myself here, it may be that because communities are formed on shared myths, it may be that the secular world will never be able to do community in the ways that religion can. And you know, we can talk about this, even with, with thrive and, and how thrive is, is not the same as running a religion. It's much more difficult. Difficult. And so we have to maybe be honest about the fact that if we're trying to get to that space that we talked about, that space in between fundamentalism and nihilism, there, there's an argument that maybe it's going to be easier to get there by deconstructing and changing religion to what we need it to be, rather than building from nothing. And so we have to be honest about the good that religion does do in the world. And also if we want to get a place where we have something like secular Judaism, where I can be an atheist and still be Mormon, which would be fantastic if I could do that, maybe, maybe it's actually faster to get there through deconstructing religion rather than building. I'm not sure that that's true, but there's certain, certainly an argument for that. And a lot of the debates that are going on right now, like 20 years ago or 10 years, 10, 15 years ago, it used to be that Christopher Hitchens did all these debates is God real? And we've kind of moved on from, from that. And now the question, question is, is religion good for society? That's what, like, people in my field are debating. It's. We're not even debating which religion is true anymore. It's just the question of is religion good for society? And there are some arguments that we need to take seriously on that.

John Dehlin [00:59:21] I'm firmly in the camp that the religion does a lot of good for society. And I, I think of it as kind of the orchestra model where you need the percussion and you need the brass and you need the strings. We need healthy religion and we need healthy secularism. And different types of brains and different types of situations are going to favor different contexts. And there's not one right context. I had an African woman reach out to me recently and she told me that she joined the church 10 years ago and it really helped her for several years. And then she went to work for the church and was treated poorly for not getting married quickly and having kids. And now it's not working for anymore. But I said, are you glad you joined the church now that you don't believe it anymore? And she said, absolutely. And I think it's arrogant, it's a privilege for those of us who are middle class, decent socioeconomic status to say religion is bad for everyone. Because now that I'm in my 40s and doing great, I feel like I'm doing great. It should be taken away from everybody or denounced.

Britt Hartley [01:00:32] Neil Brennan has a fantastic comedy bit where he talks about atheism being a privilege. And he says, you know, he's, he's, there's like this kernel of truth in the comedy that he's playing with. But he talks about how atheism is, is the most. Is the highest form of white privilege because it's like, hey, could I interest you in an afterlife? And you're like, how much better could it be? You know, and he does a whole bit about it. But there is some. Yeah, we have to recognize, Recognize privilege there too. There's privilege in being able to gather the resources that religion provides outside of religion. If you can do that, there's some privilege there. There are times and places where it was. It's not possible to really do that and, and still have all the things that you need as a human.

Margi Dehlin [01:01:15] Yeah, right. If you're in survival every day, you, you likely do not have the time nor the resources to.

John Dehlin [01:01:23] Yeah, I just, I don't want to rush through this because I love this stuff, but like, I love. No. Rasheta. He's an ex Mormon stories listener. Ex Mormon. He started secular Buddhism podcasts and he. It's the most popular Buddhism themed podcast.

Britt Hartley [01:01:39] Yeah, he's killing it.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] And he always starts every episode with, don't use secular Buddhism to become a Buddhist. Use it to become a better whatever you are. I think we ex Mormons and secular folk have to swallow the medicine that we're actually succeeding in helping our churches become more compassionate, more liberal, more woman friendly.

Britt Hartley [01:02:01] The last, the last one I saw is the changes in the polygamy cartoons because ex Mormons, we went to town on those polygamy cartoons saying that like, oh, Joseph's felt icky about it, but God commanded it and we all had a fit. And guess what? Like, changes happen.

John Dehlin [01:02:14] How about garments? Changes for women where now their tank top garments basically, or spaghetti strap garments like this idea. It's. Right now it's fine to be a pro life Catholic or a pro choice. Sorry. To be a pro choice Catholic Mormonism is going to evolve to the point where you can be an atheist Mormon and you're fine?

Britt Hartley [01:02:38] I think so, yeah. Give it 5,000 years. Five or six thousand years. Like the Jews, they got the money.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] How about 30?

Britt Hartley [01:02:43] No, not in 30.

John Dehlin [01:02:44] You don't think the changes, the pace of the changes now will allow you

Britt Hartley [01:02:48] to be an open atheist and still hold callings in Mormonism? I think no.

John Dehlin [01:02:54] I have talked to many men who were put in bishoprics as out atheists to their bishop or stake president. Now they weren't able to say. Yeah, that they were atheists.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] But their stake president was like, we want you in the bishopric.

Britt Hartley [01:03:09] I'd love. Because I want to be.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:12] Yeah, yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:03:12] I want to be wrong on that one. I think that that's an anomaly, but I would love to be right.

John Dehlin [01:03:16] Well, if Jews can do it, why can't Mormons do it?

Britt Hartley [01:03:18] They've had 6,000 years more.

John Dehlin [01:03:20] Reform Judaism started in the late 1800s.

Britt Hartley [01:03:22] I know, but, but they have, they have, they have something that most, that many religions don't. So for example, Islam doesn't really have this aspect, which is they have, they have long form communication, like long form conversation that changes over time. And so they have a lot of scripture and just a lot of conversations. So they, they, they have things in there built into their religion that allows them to change and shift.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] We have podcasts.

Britt Hartley [01:03:49] I know. Whereas like Islam is something like. No, like this is, you know, the Quran is like, this is straight from fixed. It's perfect. Yeah, it's more fixed. So it may be, it may be distinct to Judaism.

John Dehlin [01:04:01] I think it's coming for us anyway.

Britt Hartley [01:04:02] Yeah, but Mormonism would be more like that because with continuing revelation, you could make pretty drastic changes within the context of the religion.

John Dehlin [01:04:10] Isn't Oaks warning people right now that there are commandments, but they're commandments that are for a time and doctrine for a time. I think they're warning us that they're going to be making big changes.

Britt Hartley [01:04:21] I hope so.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:22] I'm with Brett here.

Britt Hartley [01:04:24] I'm skeptical, but I'm a skeptical person, so I'm going to be skeptical of everything.

John Dehlin [01:04:28] Well, I'm skeptical of your skepticism.

Britt Hartley [01:04:30] That's great.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:31] That's fantastic.

John Dehlin [01:04:32] And yours, Margi, I love that. For the record, I'm actually more pro religion than Margi. Is that fair to say?

Britt Hartley [01:04:38] Yeah, but that tends to be true of men and women in general. Women do better outside of religion religion because we can form communities. I could call up Margi and 10 girlfriends to meet me for lunch and say, I'm going through something in my marriage, I need to talk about it and cry about it. Totally socially acceptable. That's a lot harder for my husband to do. Yeah, right. All right, number seven here. Underestimate. I think we talked about this a little too. But underestimating the hard work it is to replace religion. Religion has had hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to develop tools for us. It is not as easy as walking out the door. I think if I were to tease atheism a little bit here, it would be. I think that the lie of atheism is that all you have to do is walk out of the door of religion and you'll just stumble upon your best life. You'll know how to do your relationships and meaning and purpose and the good life, and you'll just kind of like trip upon it. And I don't think that we're as damned and broken as the Christians tell us we are, but I don't think that we. We're like the atheists tell us we're like, you'll be fine if you just leave religion. I think we're in between those two places. Maybe we're not fundamentally broken, but we certainly need a lot of help. And I think some people underappreciate how much they benefited from religion as a jumping off platform. They got all the benefits of community ego building, practicing speaking, education, scripture study, subsidized education at byu, moral education, warnings around drugs and sex, people that have cared about you, a sense of becoming a young man and then an adult, having clear rituals that represent rites of passage as you grow. And then in your 40s, you'll say, I don't really need religion. And it's like, that's great, but like, you had a foundation to jump off of. And I think we're missing that. I'm not saying don't leave organized religion. I'm saying don't underestimate the amount of work that it takes to replace it. Because some Mormons, especially with tithing, they'll think, oh, I have 10% of my income back. No, you have that. Part of your income now needs to go to girls. Girl Scouts now needs to go to my son in karate because he's getting some Bruce Lee moral education from a karate instructor. Now that 10 needs to go into replacing all of the things that you're not getting anymore. And I think sometimes we miss that.

Underestimating Deconstruction as a Lifelong Process

John Dehlin [01:06:58] I'm reminded of that Buddhist metaphor of the raft. It's, you know, let's just say you want to cross a river or you're fleeing something and. And it's the raft that takes you across the river. Who's going to get to the other side side and want to destroy the raft. Why not leave the raft there for other people? Similarly, ex Mormons hate Mormonism sometimes, but they're creations of Mormonism.

Britt Hartley [01:07:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:23] And so what if we, number one, had gratitude for what brought us to where we are, even if it was flawed. And I know it's easier for men generally to say that than women, so I appreciate you saying that. No, it's. No, I. I totally see that.

Britt Hartley [01:07:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:39] That Mormonism was created for and by men, and so men are going to see it more favorably than women. So maybe I'm speaking mostly to men,

Britt Hartley [01:07:48] but even, like, our. Our ability to speak now with microphones. Like, if you were like me, raised in the church, every year you gave a talk, and then we would bear a testimony to a group of people. And there's a reason that ex Mormons, like, we have so many podcasts. Everybody has a podcast, and it's great. It's fantastic. Everybody podcasts and talk to each other, and let's figure out, like, what the hell is going on with us. Like, all of that is fantastic, but we sometimes, like, miss the fact that the reason that we're able to just stand up and speak to a group of people is because we had the opportunity to develop that skill. And that's just one tiny little skill. There are thousands of those little skills that we have developed in Mormonism that we have to one, remember to try and replace for our kids, but also just recognize it for what it was. I got to work with text. I got to go to byu, Idaho and work with history and philosophy and theology, and it trained my mind. And I got to practice speaking. Every time I had a calling, I was speaking and I couldn't. I can't stand on where I am now without noticing all of that underneath me.

John Dehlin [01:08:54] Yeah. So I guess to summarize, to the extent you can be grateful for what got you to where you are, if you like who you are now, be grateful for it. And what if we tried to improve the raft for others who might need to take the raft instead of feel like it's our job to deny that the raft is useful or to try and destroy the raft.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:14] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:09:14] In fact, I asked. We were talking about Chat GPT off air, and I asked chatgpt one time, like, could secularism really actually grow and compete with religion? Says no.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] I agree.

Britt Hartley [01:09:28] Like, religion, it's produces especially patriarchal religion. There. There's a reason it took over the world. It. It produces more power, more money, more resources, more children, more communities to raise those children. It's just the output of it. We just can't compete with it, because when you have something like a strong myth about hell and you're pouring all of your money and resources into your church, there's nothing in the secular world that can compete with that. So Chap GPT thinks that relationship religion is, is going to win, fundamentalism is going to win. It's just too wired into our brains. But it says what secularism needs to do best is without secularism, we'll see the worst of what religion can do. And so secularism's job is not to replace religion, but to check religion. And so that's what ChatGPT said. Like, we need you for what you're doing for Mormonism, not because you guys are going to create something like an ex Mormon church that's going to give you all the good things that Mormonism did without any of the bad things. You're not going to be able to do that. But you can check Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] And we are, we're, we're helping.

Britt Hartley [01:10:32] Right. I think so too. And maybe, and maybe that's a big role of what secularism is, is really going to be able to do.

John Dehlin [01:10:39] I just wish we could find the community I know in all the good ways that we have it.

Britt Hartley [01:10:44] I, I think that can be built. I think that that can be built individually. I think you in your own life can build that. I, I know thousands of people who have built that in their own life. But walking into something like a Mormon church that has everything they, that you want and nothing that you don't want, I don't think that we're capable of it because we just don't have strong enough shared myths to get the resources to be able to pull off something like that.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:08] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:11:09] It become anything bigger than what you're able to do individually will be by definition some form of cult. So that's your, you have to pick your poison kind of on that one.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:19] Yeah, yeah, I see that. Can I add, please, one thing too, with this idea, idea of ChatGPT and how secularism can check maybe the patriarchal religion thing, that's always gonna kind of, and I kind of like the idea of secularism being also maybe a rescue raft for those who are inevitably harmed. Yeah. Marginalized communities where actually, you know, if that's gonna in quotation marks trump all the patriarchal religion, then at least there's a rescue plan for those who are really, really harmed within that at least.

Britt Hartley [01:11:59] And I think that's something that we can eventually get better at and do that. That I can't give you a church where you can just walk in and get instant community like you had with Mormonism. But I can give you these tools and you can build it in your own life. You can build this in your own life. That's what secularism can Offer. Yeah, yeah, right. But it needs to get better at that for sure.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:21] It's.

Britt Hartley [01:12:21] It spends so much time trying to just check the excesses of religion that sometimes we don't have enough time to build up the resources that you're talking about. But I hope we get better at that.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:31] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:12:32] All right, next one. Okay. Underestimating that. Deconstruction is a lifelong process. I meet people who talk about deconstruction as if it was a one time event because we're Mormon and we check off lists like nobody else I deconstructed. Right. It's like past tense. Your brain was formed in a religion. And if not in real, if not in a religion, then some form of matrix of reality. You will be rediscovering old thought patterns and previous beliefs and former selves for the rest of your life. When people talk about deconstruction, they are usually talking about beliefs. But we also build a brain around our beliefs beliefs. We build thought patterns that exist long after the beliefs are gone. I tell clients that this is the hardest part of deconstruction, when all of your old beliefs are gone, but your thought patterns are still there because that's the moment where you have the least amount of tools, because you don't have the tools from your old beliefs, but you don't have new ways to think about things yet. There are times when I still think 20 years later, okay, I'm finally on top of deconstructing how patriarchy has affected me, and I'm still finding new things. So I think we just need to get more comfortable. And I think, Margi, you've talked about this. Get more comfortable with deconstruction being a lifetime event. You, if you are in a healthy learning process, you should be deconstructing and reconstructing all of the time. It is not a past tense event that we check off a list. I deconstructed Mormonism. I'm still finding. I'm still finding new ways that patriarchy has affected or some Mormon thought pattern has affected the way that I think. But also I'm learning new things and having to. To deconstruct new things. Your deconstruction should keep going after Mormonism. It should keep going.

John Dehlin [01:14:17] Is this what you mean by seasons as a metaphor, Margi, that every year there's growth, there's germination, growth, death?

Margi Dehlin [01:14:29] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:14:30] Something should be dying and growing all

John Dehlin [01:14:32] the time, letting go as reflected through the seasons?

Margi Dehlin [01:14:34] Yeah, I find. So I could spend, I'm sure, a day talking with Britt about the seasons. And things I find. But yeah, I do think that. And I do think that's a large part of my. Why, honestly, in doing Mormon stories is because I feel like we look at one, it's religious deconstruction, but really it's because this is likely, you know, one aspect of deconstruction. It's likely maybe the beginning of a long. Like the rest of your life now, looking at systems histories, things you've been. You've accepted as truth, that you will deconstruct. And it becomes a template of sorts of how to grieve, what does it

Britt Hartley [01:15:20] look like to do you find that it. After, like, after a faith transition, that template of you should always be kind of dying and growing gets eaten easier. I think so too, because. Because people sometimes in their deconstruction will tell me, like, wait, I'm gonna, like, feel like this forever. Like, I feel like I'm dying. And over time, like, once you kind of detach your identity from what you believe, once you do that, once it gets easier that when I learn something new, I don't have my identity wrapped around it the way that I used to. And now, oh, I was wrong about something. I'm more complex on something. I'm more nuanced about something. It becomes easier. And now it becomes this flow of constantly dying and regrowing rather than just like this big break. Right. That we have with Mormonism because it's built up over so many years. Because they want us to kind of have the same testimony at 12 that we do at 40.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:15] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:16:16] And so it builds up, but once you kind of go through that big detachment between your identity and your beliefs, it becomes easier to just be constantly dying and growing.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:26] Yes, I. I think that. And I also think that that actually becomes one of the main things that we connect to about being alive. It wasn't like it within Mormonism. There was so much that was static.

John Dehlin [01:16:42] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:43] It was. It was like not alive.

Britt Hartley [01:16:45] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:45] You. You. They tell you how to build the thing, you build the thing, and it's like, it should stay that way till you die.

Britt Hartley [01:16:51] Yeah, right.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:52] And so I do think part of that deconstruction is realizing, ah, this is what it actually be engaged with life.

Britt Hartley [01:17:00] That's such a different twist on the term of a living church.

John Dehlin [01:17:04] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:17:04] Like, yeah, my. My growth now really feels alive. Whereas in Mormonism, there were times where it did feel very. Just like concrete, you know, and. And then, yeah, that. That will limit you.

John Dehlin [01:17:17] And marriages can go through deaths and rebirths too. Right?

Britt Hartley [01:17:21] Yeah, My husband and I were coming up on 20 years next month and we've. It's been marriages of a couple different people. You know, like there's been different marriages.

John Dehlin [01:17:31] Different marriages within one marriage.

Britt Hartley [01:17:34] Yes, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:35] I think we relate to that. I also think parenting is that way. I think health, the healthcare system, you know, the, There are just so many. The education system, once you kind of view systems in curiosity and you kind of know what to look for. Because your faith deconstruction kind of shows you that. Yeah, I think it's, it's this way of like realizing we're always changing, just like everything else that is alive.

Britt Hartley [01:18:06] That's what it means to be alive.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:07] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:18:07] Yes. Yeah. I love that this will be like a short thing here, but I'm curious that you said something last time we talked, John, where I'm curious whether this is a place where you've been wanting to deconstruct because you said something like, I think we have free will. I just kind of assume that we've always had free will, but I haven't really looked at it. So I'm curious just. Yeah, I'm curious if you've wanted to go down that rabbit.

Free Will, Personal Agency, and Evolving Beliefs

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Oh, absolutely. I have not read a book on free will, but I am super light on the idea of any of us having a lot of free will. This is a pretty common conclusion to make. I feel like I feel better and do better if I accept consciously the illusion that I have free will and that others have free will. But when I look at other people, especially people who are caught in toxic cycles of self defeat, I me realizing that chemicals and brain wirings and trauma and genetics are so much more at play than any of us realize. And it just allows me to have compassion on the world and on myself. And I never want to lose accountability to think that I need to have the ability to change and get better. And it's the belief that I have free will that kind of makes me think maybe I can do better. But I'm super light on free will these days. That's where I am.

Britt Hartley [01:19:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:43] Did I even touch on your question?

Britt Hartley [01:19:45] Yeah, yeah, I was just curious because we, we touched on it briefly. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I, I've gone down that rabbit hole enough that I've, I've made peace and sense with not having free will. And, and so I'm, I'm there. But yeah, I was just curious if some people specifically avoid that deconstruction, that rabbit hole, because it can be psychologically disorienting and so, yeah, I was just curious where you were at with them.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] Yeah, I'm light on actual free will.

Britt Hartley [01:20:12] Yeah, but. But you find benefit in the belief of it.

John Dehlin [01:20:17] I have a little bit of belief in free will. It's like. It's like the faith I used to have in Mormon.

Britt Hartley [01:20:21] I was just gonna say that's a little Mormon John, where it's like, the science isn't really adding up here, but it's sure helping me to believe that that's a little Mormon John.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:29] It is. And yet, I think, you know, for many of us, we may choose to connect to something that gives us comfort, knowing that it either, you know, gives us comfort or allows us to show up differently. It gives us just sort of a different feeling that fuels us in a different way. But the difference is that we're aware of that and that we're actively choosing it. That is not what Mormonism was.

Britt Hartley [01:20:57] Was. Yeah, that is different. I'm. I'm sometimes envious of that. My brain just doesn't, like, let me make that move. So, yeah, sometimes I'm jealous of. Of that ability to be able to choose things that are helpful. My brain's like, I don't.

John Dehlin [01:21:14] Can I tease back for a second, please? Like, isn't there a place. So what I heard you say in your tease when you said that sounds a little Mormon John, is having faith in something that you don't necessarily have evidence for is very Mormon. That's what I. That's how I know you're teasing.

Britt Hartley [01:21:31] That it's a helpful belief, whether or not it's true.

John Dehlin [01:21:34] Like, tell me how you are, Britt, with faith. With.

Britt Hartley [01:21:37] Yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [01:21:38] It's monogamy or celibacy, like there. Or. Or, sorry, monogamy or psychedelics or secularism. Don't you think there's some faith in. In those positions? Because we don't really know what's good and what's bad.

Britt Hartley [01:21:54] No.

John Dehlin [01:21:56] Why not?

Britt Hartley [01:21:59] Faith. There's certainly hope. There's certainly hope. But I would continue to do what I do even if I knew. Even if I knew for sure that. That religion wins. Secularism never does anything. Like, this is a meaningful game for me to play. And for me, just the kind of mind that I have. Have. And you only find this with people who are high. Like, truth seeking is their highest core value, and only people like that are always willing to pay the cost for harsh truths. And so for my brain, I physically cannot choose things that are helpful to believe. My brain just doesn't want to play that game. And so I have to develop a spirituality. And again, this is not like the path for everyone, just the path for me. I have to develop a form of spirituality that can withstand what seems to be true. That doesn't mean I know that it's true, but it seems to be that there's no. That there's no meaning in the universe, that I'm going to be forgotten in three generations, that I'm going to die, and that's the end. That I don't have free will. These are. These are harsh truths to deal with. And my spirituality has to be able to withstand that without skirting around it, because my brain just can't. Like, I just can't. I just can't summon that. And so I want. I want. I want as many tools and resources as I can that can withstand what seems to be true. Because I think there's value in facing reality, that if there is no free will, I want to be able to face that. And collectively, I think if we all accepted that maybe there is no God that's coming to save us, maybe we aren't here after we die, maybe we could actually make the structural changes to actually make life on Earth fundamentally worth living.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:45] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:23:45] So you either have to, like, develop. It's like something that Jordan Peterson says with death, you either give kids a security blanket or you help them to become strong. And for me, like, my personality type, I would rather. And it doesn't always work. Sometimes. Sometimes it's hard, which is why nihilists are so high in suicide. And the philosophers that I read, very high in suicide, suicide. But that is the path that calls me. Because I can't make that move of. I just want to believe something because it's helpful.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:14] Yeah. And I hope you get the sense that I value truth and evidence.

Britt Hartley [01:24:17] Oh, absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:19] I guess my understanding of the evidence behind free will is that we really don't know for sure whether we have zero free will or 2% free will or 10% or 20%. Like, if you add up all the evidence and all that we know, which is very little about the human brain. Honestly, at the end of the day, I think it's reasonable to put your faith in the idea that there's some free will. Otherwise, why are we even talking about stuff? Yeah, why talk about stuff if it's

Britt Hartley [01:24:48] all we talk about stuff? Because, like, I. We change our mind because we don't have free will. Like, nobody woke up one day and decided, I really want to blow up my life by losing my faith. In Mormonism, it's just something that happens to you. Right. So free will doesn't mean we stop doing things. Not having free will doesn't mean we stop doing things. It means that. That there are certain things that you can say and certain buttons that you can push that will push dominoes over in my mind where I will change my mind. So the fact that we don't have free will is the reason that we change our minds. Otherwise I could be like, if we had free will, I feel like we'd be able to say, I believe in the Mormon God right now. And I would just do it. I believe in unicorns, I believe in drag. And we could just do it, but we can't. Yeah, we physically. I think it's. Yeah, it's dominoes falling.

John Dehlin [01:25:35] Your dominoes knock over my dominoes.

Britt Hartley [01:25:37] Yes. So it's, it's. It's beneficial to have conversations because we're knocking over dominoes that would have always fallen with that information into that system.

John Dehlin [01:25:46] It's compatible with the Buddhist notion of we're just observers of what's going on.

Britt Hartley [01:25:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:50] And instead of trying to control everything.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:52] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:25:53] I'm in a place where I can watch the meat suit that I. I'm in. How it interacts in the world.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:00] But it's all predetermined.

Britt Hartley [01:26:02] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:02] But it's still.

Britt Hartley [01:26:03] But because we're conscious, there's a level of ex. There's a quality of experience to it, which means that I can experience my life in more or less suffering, more or less thriving. So it's. It's a ride that ends, that is somewhat. That is determined. But I can still find ways to enjoy the ride, keep deconstructing. It's so fun. It's so fun to just blow up everything that you know and just be floating in abyss of knowing nothing. So fun.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:32] I feel like I should bring up actually your Instagram post with your conversation, that journal writing thing you did with chat gbt, because I think it does show emotionally for you personal, that vulnerability of, of sometimes what it can feel like that it can feel kind of

Britt Hartley [01:26:53] like on a. I, I try to, I try to shine a light on both that There are some days where I feel so confident that there are tools and resources that can really help you out here in the secular world, you don't have to believe in XYZ in order to live a meaningful life. And I do believe that. But there are also some times where I have to be honest that if you are a true seeker, at all cost costs There will be costs. There will be cost. It's, it's. There, there's going to be some loneliness and some disconnection from society and other people. There's going to be things that you sometimes wish that you didn't learn, that you didn't know. There are some people, I have a lot of clients that don't believe in a God or don't believe in free will and wish that they did. They envy the people that seem. And there's some science to show that there is a level of, of ignorance is bliss like there, there, there is science to show that the more you read philosophy, the more depressed you get. So my personality type wants to take that journey because I want to be able to build something in light of harsh truths of reality. But I'm humble enough to know that if my brother, for example, who is an addict, he has very high loyalty as a core value. This path for his sobriety, very dangerous. Statistically. I don't want him anywhere near my, my path would not be good for him.

John Dehlin [01:28:13] Amen.

Britt Hartley [01:28:13] You know what I mean? And so I, I want to be honest about both sides. I think that there's tools where you don't have to be dependent on religion, but also there are some things where the story of religion is a lot nicer than the story that I believe in. And there's a cost to that. And I just want to be honest about that.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:31] Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that.

Finding New Prophets and Spiritual Dependency

Britt Hartley [01:28:34] All right, two more here. Next one is finding new prophets. This one I get. So I talk to a lot of spiritual, spiritual people in the spiritual world. And the reason, I gotta tell you guys, they're annoyed with ex Mormons. They're annoyed with us. The reason that people in the spiritual world are annoyed with ex Mormons is because we have prophet centric brains and we have a form of prophet worship in our, in our religion. And we will take that to our next spiritual leaders. I've talked to Thomas McConkey about this. I've talked to other people about this. We get really good, clingy and really demanding of spiritual leaders even outside of religion. So even with my clients, they'll ask me, well, what do you believe about this? I have to constantly turn that power over. It doesn't, it doesn't matter what I, why does it matter what I believe about this? What do you think about this? And so something that we do as, as Mormons deconstructing is we'll often find new prophets that could be Sam Harris or Bennet Brown or John de Lin. Or me or Margi. Like, we'll find new prophets and it's great that, um, I think everybody needs to have inspirational voices, but we just have to be aware of that clinging. We'll get very clingy because we're used to having a prophet tell us what to do. And sometimes we're taking that with us. Where I've seen people leave Mormonism and then like, whatever Sam Harris's opinion is on everything is their new opinion because they're just kind of waiting for Sam Harris to tell them what to do or whoever the person is.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:06] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:30:07] And I think we have to be aware of that profit centric mindset and like you were talking about, step into our own kind of authenticity, even though it's uncomfortable at first for us.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:20] So, yes. And okay, what if when somebody asks Britt Hartley whether she believes in God or not, they're just inviting dominoes going back to the free will discussion. Yeah, they're just trying to invite Brits Dominoes to knock over their dominoes.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:38] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:30:38] There's a difference between like conversation, people asking me things to which I'm usually really open about my opinion on things and my opinion changes and all of that. I'm more talking about like in a coaching scenario.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:50] I heard that.

Britt Hartley [01:30:51] Right? In a coaching scenario. Sometimes they'll start. They're not just looking for my opinion on things, they're kind of looking for their own. Yeah. What to do. So like they know that I've done more research on near death experiences, studies, so they want me to just tell them what happens after they die. And I have to like, push that rack right back to you. Like, I don't know, you need, you need to either be okay with not knowing or like have your own opinion on this. I can't. I can't be. I can't always be, you know, your answer to things. Even though you want me to be that for you, I can't be that for you.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:26] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:31:26] I can tell you, you know, some of the things that I've learned along the way. But I can't be your prophet for you.

Margi Dehlin [01:31:31] Yeah, I've had experience, I think a lot of experience with that too.

Britt Hartley [01:31:35] Yes, I've been that you have coaching

Margi Dehlin [01:31:36] and I see a couple things at work there. It is that profit kind of go external as opposed to connect, I think, with yourself.

Britt Hartley [01:31:45] And that's okay. Like we have to learn how to do that. That's not new. It's not intuitive to us. I'm not shaming that at all. Like, I I definitely clung to a few voices early on in my deconstruction. Now, looking back, maybe more than I needed to, because that. It wasn't in an intuitive move to me of like, oh, what do I think about this?

Margi Dehlin [01:32:04] I think it's that. And I also think sometimes at that stage of deconstruction, it can be a difficult time to connect with ourselves because there's so much now we realize we don't.

Britt Hartley [01:32:15] And we don't know who we are.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:16] That's right. And we're realizing, you know, there. Sometimes there's some self betrayal there or. And so it's also timing. Right. That.

Britt Hartley [01:32:24] No, you're so right with that.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:26] That it can be, I think, a difficult time to do that. I also think it's tied to that. But the instability, the idea of living with all those questions so then when you're asked, and then they're left with, I don't know and I don't know where to look and I don't know where to. Yeah, that. There's just. It's that move from stability external. Tell me.

Britt Hartley [01:32:50] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:51] To this idea of like, okay, now I'm in a really unstable place. I don't know who I am. Right. And I don't. And so it, that is a higher hurdle.

Britt Hartley [01:33:00] Right?

Margi Dehlin [01:33:01] It is more of a. I think.

Britt Hartley [01:33:03] Yeah. So what you're looking for in a coach or in a voice in that situation is someone who can say, here are some options.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:09] That's right. Right.

Britt Hartley [01:33:09] Because we, we need some help.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:11] Right. Like.

Britt Hartley [01:33:12] Like, we need some help. And so what I'll do is like, I don't know what my spiritual path is. Great. Here are, Here's a study that we did in 2004. It's the tree of. The tree of contemplate contemplative practices. Here are all the different ways that humans can connect. Which one seems to resonate with you? That that tends to be the help that's most helpful, is not someone who will say, this is the way, but someone who says, these are the options. What resonates with you, that's what you're

Margi Dehlin [01:33:37] looking for in a coach. Now you get to.

Britt Hartley [01:33:40] Now you get to. And that's different than a profit relationship. Sometimes we'll get sucked into a prophet, a teal swan character or someone. And. And now we're kind of on someone else's path. That's right.

John Dehlin [01:33:51] So what's evil is the group guru or the leader or the therapist or the coach that says, I have special powers from God. That's evil. Or I know What God wants for you, that's evil. Or I know what's the right answer for you or what you should do, that's evil. Or I know what you should think or believe, that's evil. Maybe it's okay for a coach or a guide or a friend to say, here's how I think about things, but you should do your own processing. Or when I consider doing these things, here are different things I tried or this is what I've seen works or doesn't work for me or others, but you should figure out what works for you. Is that fair or not?

Britt Hartley [01:34:32] Yeah, I wouldn't always use the term evil there because some of it is ignorance. Like, I know I'm very. I know a lot of young, especially male meditation gurus and I do beat up on them sometimes, but they're sometimes so easy to. But they'll. They'll genuinely have meditation practices that have really improved their life, but they'll assume that everyone will benefit from that. And I see this especially with young meditative teachers and not knowing that, for example, it can be very healthy for men to dissolve the ego, but they maybe don't realize that for women, they often need the opposite. And so sometimes they. That's not necessarily evil. That more comes from a place of ignorance and, and sometimes even youth. But yeah, you. You want to find teachers and leaders and coaches and voices that talk about availability of paths and help you resonate with the one that's for you.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:30] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:35:31] And sometimes we don't do that and

Margi Dehlin [01:35:33] really value, I think, to exploration, you know.

Britt Hartley [01:35:38] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:38] Exploring and knowing. Noticing as a process and a practice.

The Pitfall of Overemphasizing Intellectualism

Britt Hartley [01:35:42] All right, last one. You ready? This one hurts. This one is painful for me personally, actually. I really hate this one. Overemphasis on intellectualism. I hate this one because it's true. But I. This, this one's definitely one that.

Margi Dehlin [01:35:59] And this was on your post too. Probably started. This was the context that got you.

Britt Hartley [01:36:03] Oh yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:04] Because you asked Chat GPT, which I love this about you, Britt, to. I thought it was like to kind of notice any horror holes or notice any. And this was something. Do I understand that?

Britt Hartley [01:36:15] Right. That's why what Marty's talking about is one day I just asked ChatGPT because I use it a lot for content and other things based on the kinds of questions that I'm asking in these. The chapters of these book that I'm writing. You know, based on what you know about me, what are some holes that you're seeing? And it was like you're really leaning in on the intellectualism sometimes and not valuing experience as much. And anyway, it went down this rabbit hole, hole of, of using Chat GPT as a therapist, which I put on my YouTube channel, if you want to see that.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:44] And it made me cry. It.

Britt Hartley [01:36:46] It made me actually cry. It actually surprised. Surprised me that it moved me to, to be able to speak openly with some, say some things that I would be hesitant to say to a human, you know, and, and so I opened a window on that. But here's, here's what's sometimes going on, especially with the people who leave Mormonism because of truth seekers speaking in his like church history stuff that kind of Mormon faith deconstruction is. We make fun of people who use religion as a security blanket, but more often than not, if you are turning to pure rationalism and you think that you are just going to be a rational robot, you are doing that as your security blanket because feelings, you felt like your feelings or historicity was manipulated in Mormonism. And, and so the place that you go to for safety is pure rationality. And people get stuck there. A lot of my clients seek me out because they get stuck there, which is like, I just am thinking of all of this rationally, but I don't know how to live my life. I'm just kind of stuck. And then they can't get into any kind of spirituality because their rational mind just shuts it down. And then, and then they're just not thriving in some way. And so we have to admit to ourselves. And this was hard for me to admit, I at first, because I didn't like it. But the people who have the kind of brains that the only thing that their body is good for is moving their head from room to room, like really disconnected from their body, will eventually get stuck somewhere in your human development because we are far more irrational than we are rational. There are feelings and emotions in your shadow self and your past selves and your irrational fears and your subconscious, which is so much going on in your subconscious. And so to pretend you're this little sliver of a rational, rational person is to ignore kind of the depths of the ocean of what you are. And, and also not valuing experience, that we are not just robots. And even if everything really is just chemical processes in our brain because we're conscious, there's an ex. There's a quality of experience to it. And we sometimes forget that because that experience wisdom gets so manipulated in Mormonism where if you feel like this is true, then it's true. And so we'll shut that, that down and then we'll get stuck because we forget how to reinvite that part of ourselves to the table because it's, you know, it's, we're very triggered by it. So sometimes in our post religious or post faith deconstruction, we can over emphasize intellectualism because we're scared of that experience side of things or feelings or all the other things that are a lot more messy. And we'll cling to rationality as our security blanket and events eventually that's going to limit your human development and the experiences that are available to you. And I think it'll be. Yeah, it'll be limiting you in some way. But I hate that because then I have to get into my body, which up until the point of my Mormon deconstruction was just a largely ignored lump that just walked me from room to room.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:56] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:39:57] I had to reconnect with my body.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:58] Yep.

Britt Hartley [01:39:59] Yeah. And you, you, you talk about that better than any anyone, I think, Margi, about getting back into your body. That's something that wasn't intuitive to me. I had to learn.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:08] Yeah, I think that's, and I think a lot of that too. You, you, I think a lot of people through Mormonism, that was something that was part of the structure. It was largely a dissociative process of, of kind of how we, the whole point, I mean, it's, it's kind of dangerous for a high, high demand religion to have its members connect with their bodies, connect with themselves. I think that would not benefit the whole. And so I think we come by some of that honestly and it can feel very new on the other side how to do that. Yeah. And feel like you can emotionally regulate.

John Dehlin [01:40:48] My favorite metaphor for this concept is the writer and the elephant that Jonathan Haidt shares in the Righteous Mind, where if you can think of yourself as a human writing on an elephant, the human writing on the elephant is the cerebral frontal cortex, your rational, logical brain with the executive functioning. Functioning. The elephant in. Represents in your brain the amygdala, the, the emotional center. And whenever the two, the writer and the elephant want to go in separate directions, who wins. It's going to be the emotions almost every, every time. Especially if, if the elephant's agitated. Right.

Britt Hartley [01:41:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:28] So either you learn to quiet the elephant or you are, you realize you're often ruled by it.

Britt Hartley [01:41:34] Yeah. And I, I think sometimes people coming from Mormonism because we feel like our experience side of ourselves has been manipulated, we almost try to kill the elephant.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:43] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:41:43] Right. Like we try to like put that elephant to sleep and then we're the writer wondering why we're not moving forward. And it's like, well, you, you're forgetting entire parts of your human nature.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:53] That's right.

Britt Hartley [01:41:54] Because you're triggered. Because, because. Because you were hurt. Yeah, because it hurt. But we have to learn how to re resurrect those things.

John Dehlin [01:42:02] I think you mentioned SSRIs is kind of numbing the elephant, right?

Britt Hartley [01:42:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:07] Numbing emotions.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:08] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:42:08] And we can't numb the bad without also numbing the good. So for some people, psychedelics has been a way to, to get off SSRIs, but yeah, we have to be able to work with the elephant. So there's things that I was do that I'm doing now that I wouldn't have done 10 years. My, my Mormon faith crisis is now almost 15 years kind of behind me. And 10 years ago I, I don't like. I really love doing dream work now, like Jungian archetype work and working with dreams. That would have felt like a little bit too woo for me 10 years ago. But it's something that I can dig into now as I'm more open to experience and symbolism and art and feeling and subconscious and emotion and fear. Right. But 10 years ago I was kind of on a mission. Mission of like, well, what is capital T true? And I know a lot of Mormons who are like that too, because that's what we learn. We're learned. We learn this is what's true. So this is how to pattern your life. So then we'll leave Mormonism and our brain is still stuck on, I need to find out what's true so I can pattern my life. And I would have saved a doctorate degree and a lot of time if I would have noticed that pattern that I was still trying to find what was capital T true. Because that's what felt safe and that's what my Mormon and brain, you know, felt like it could do. And I was missing large parts of my human nature.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:24] Yeah. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:43:27] So that's my. That's 10.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] So that's 10 and 41 minutes.

Britt Hartley [01:43:33] We did 10. And those are all things that I'm seeing in my coaching practice of things to just be aware of. And also things that for me personally looking back, I might have know, done, done differently or wish I would have done better. But yeah, hopefully that helps people who are deconstructing just be aware of these pitfalls or be aware of these ways of thinking that can limit your ability to to really be thriving post deconstruction.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:04] I love it. And we're only half done. In other words, we're going to do a part two. Yep. Where we're going to talk about 10 things. What to do.

Britt Hartley [01:44:13] Yeah, to do.

John Dehlin [01:44:14] So we're going to be positive.

Britt Hartley [01:44:15] We're going to be positive.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] We're going to get half the views of the negative.

Britt Hartley [01:44:19] I know.

John Dehlin [01:44:19] Is that the way? Why. Why do people want the dirt and they don't want the healing and growth? Do you have an answer for that?

Britt Hartley [01:44:26] Like, righteous anger feels really good and, like. Right. Like righteous anger and also just like feeling like you're better than people.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:34] There's.

Britt Hartley [01:44:34] There's an addiction to that kind of negativity because you feel like. Like it's. It's othering and you're better and you're smarter and it's just really addicting.

John Dehlin [01:44:45] Also sexual rock and roll.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:47] Right.

Britt Hartley [01:44:47] Whereas, like, the good things are, like, things that we need to be better on and, like, work on and. And they require work and humility. And so it's. They're not as fun emotionally because they

John Dehlin [01:44:57] require more of a sudden. No one's going to tune into part two.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:59] No.

Britt Hartley [01:45:00] Part two is going to be amazing. Part two is going to be all the things that you should. That you should do in your deconstruction that will make you so much happier. So come back.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Beautiful, healthy, exciting life.

Britt Hartley [01:45:11] Yes. Yes.

Recap and Positive Steps Forward in Deconstruction

Margi Dehlin [01:45:12] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [01:45:13] Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:45:14] Everybody who listened to part one, come back for part two.

John Dehlin [01:45:16] All right.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:17] It's gonna be good.

John Dehlin [01:45:18] A book is that you should all buy right now. No nonsense spirituality if you haven't bought it. All the tools, no faith required. If you have bought it, buy a copy for your loved one. We get no and, you know, remuneration. We just think Britt's great and this is a great book. So buy it. Let her and her kids go to, what, Disneyland? What's next?

Britt Hartley [01:45:38] Yeah, what's next? Next? I don't even know yet.

John Dehlin [01:45:42] Okay.

Britt Hartley [01:45:42] I'll have to. I'll have to think about that. But.

John Dehlin [01:45:45] But support the book.

Britt Hartley [01:45:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:46] Check out her channels. No nonsense spirituality on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. She's also a coach. Do you even have openings these days?

Britt Hartley [01:45:56] Not. Not really. For. For coaching. I'm pretty booked. But the things. The things that I do.

John Dehlin [01:46:02] No. Someone to follow. What's someone under you?

Britt Hartley [01:46:04] A disciple.

John Dehlin [01:46:05] You need. You need disciples.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:06] I'm very.

Britt Hartley [01:46:07] I'm very hesitant of having. Having disciples for obvious reasons.

John Dehlin [01:46:10] If any of you want to be Brooke's disciple, Britt, I Am my brain. If any of you want to be Britt's disciple, reach out to her and she'll be your guru.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:22] Selection, that word choice. Yeah.

Britt Hartley [01:46:26] There are some things that I don't do specifically because I'm wary of, like becoming a spiritual guru. So I don't do branding. I don't do T shirts, I don't do. I'm trying to stay in the healthy space for me too, in this space. Um, but, yeah, but the majority of things that I do with clients, because I can't see all the clients that I possibly could, I do put into courses. So I do have courses available on my website. Oh, that's beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:49] I didn't.

Britt Hartley [01:46:49] I didn't know that of. Of like, the main themes that I do with people. So nihilism, feminine spirituality, deconstruction, lots of things there too. So that's great. All right, come back for part two.

John Dehlin [01:47:00] All right. Thanks, Britt. Thanks, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [01:47:02] Yeah, I'm excited.

John Dehlin [01:47:04] And thanks for joining us today. Please like this episode. Please subscribe to this channel and Britt's channel channels. Please comment. We'd love to hear from you whether this resonate with you, whether you have further questions, what you liked, what you didn't, how this stuff manifests in your life. What are the things we left out? We're here for all the comments. Will you be reviewing the comments?

Britt Hartley [01:47:24] Yeah, I'll. I'll lurk in the comments a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:47:29] I'll flag you if there's something interesting. All that, all that helps grow the channel and it's also fun. Again, we'll end by thanking all our donors because it's the monthly donations that make Mormon stories possible. If you are not a donor and you value this type of content and you want to see it continue, the only way that will continue is if you go to mormonstories.org click on the donate button, Become a monthly donor. Otherwise we lose a dozen or two donors every month and we have to close shop. So go, please donate if you can. Thanks. For those of you do. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Come Back for Part 2 of 10 Things to Do to do in your faith Deconstruction. Thanks again, Britt.

Britt Hartley [01:48:14] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:48:15] Thanks, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:16] Yep.

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