Introducing Erika Nordfelt and Episode Intentions

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 7, 2025. Happy New Year. And today we're interviewing someone who I'd call the Natasha Helfer of Rexburg.

Erika Nordfelt [00:00:15] That's amazing.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] You weren't expecting that, were you?

Erika Nordfelt [00:00:17] I wasn't. I'll take it.

John Dehlin [00:00:19] And our never Mormon listeners are like, what is a Natasha Helfer? What does that mean? No, we're interviewing Erica Nordfelt. Hey, Erica.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:26] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] How's it going?

Erika Nordfelt [00:00:27] So good.

John Dehlin [00:00:29] And Erica is a mental health professional in Rexburg, Idaho, which I call is the equivalent of Saudi Arabia for Mormonism, basically. No. Is that rude? Is that insensitive? I don't know.

Erika Nordfelt [00:00:41] Well, it's just ironic because it's so cold there and Saudi Arabia is so hot. Okay, but, yeah, we'll take it. But also, there's dryness bearing the lead there.

John Dehlin [00:00:49] Doctrinally, it's about being a mental health professional, a Mormon mental health professional in one of the most conservative, sometimes harsh culturally places in Mormonism, because you can find some really harsh areas in Utah, like Utah County, Provo, Orem, Davis county, you know, bountiful area, even Cache Valley. You'll find pockets of heavily orthodox Mormonism all throughout Utah. But it's hard to beat Rexburg, Idaho, as the most hardcore, cultural, doctrinally rigid pocket of Mormonism.

Erika Nordfelt [00:01:29] I think I say that it's like everything that is maybe rigid or orthodox in Mormonism is concentrated in Rexburg. It's, like, compressed and. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty accurate.

John Dehlin [00:01:41] So it's not only cool to talk to someone who's kind of there and swimming in it, but she worked at the BYU Idaho Counseling center as a therapist, so she could talk about whatever she's able and willing to talk about there in terms of that experience. But then also now she has a network of mental health professionals in Rexburg that she manages, just like Natasha Helfer, who's doing something similar here in Salt Lake County. And Julie Hanks does that and others as well. But it's basically about providing mental health services to Mormons and ex Mormons. And then. And then I think there's another theme about just navigating sexual health, sexual shame, both in one's life, in one's marriage, but also trying to support Mormons and ex Mormons. And I've just given an introduction to your episode, so.

Erika Nordfelt [00:02:36] Yes, great. All sounds good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:41] So welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Erika Nordfelt [00:02:43] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] Erica Northfield.

Erika Nordfelt [00:02:44] Thrilled. So thrilled. It's really I would say it's a bucket list thing, but that can't be a bucket list thing because not everyone. It's a privilege, I feel like really to be here. It's exciting.

John Dehlin [00:02:54] Well, we're glad to have you. And of course we're glad to have the mother or the grandmother of ex Mormonism, Margi Dehlin. Yay.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:03] You are dropping things this morning.

Erika Nordfelt [00:03:05] Totally kidding.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] I'm kidding. Margi, welcome.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:09] Yes, I'm so pleased to be here.

John Dehlin [00:03:11] All right.

Margi Dehlin [00:03:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] Well, as we always try and start, we start with an intention and Erica, I think you have an intention.

Erika Nordfelt [00:03:18] Yes, I do. It's funny, anytime I hear this question, it reminds me of like, you know, testimony meetings or talks where people have a commentary about. I didn't wanna get up, but the spirit told me to bear. And so here I am making commentary about my intentions. Like is very classically Mormon.

Erika Nordfelt [00:03:38] Cause it just makes me laugh that most people are somehow talking about this before they state their intentions. And so am I. But I think a lot you'll hear through my story that there's. There's so much meaning in downsizing or deleting shame from humans lives. Like it's so damaging, it's so destructive. And I see this platform as a way to be able, I mean, and that's something I do a lot personally and professionally is try to help people feel worth and value.

Erika Nordfelt [00:04:08] And so being able to be a part of the larger conversation on this platform is really meaningful. If there's those that can begin to believe that they are valuable, that they aren't worthless for whatever reason, and that there are a lot of humans that understand them, that are like them, whether that's me or whether that's maybe stories of clients that I'm experiencing or expressing, not that I'm not that I'm disclosing anything, you know, I'm not breaking hipaa, but there's a lot of meaning to be able to, I would say, be a part of the larger mission to decrease shame. So. And there's meaning in being able to tell my story in that too, which I'm not very good at talking about myself.

Erika Nordfelt [00:04:54] So this is gonna be tricky. I'm much better at asking people questions and getting them to talk about themselves. Yeah, I find meaning in sharing my story because that's how people connect. Like shame is decreased as we are vulnerable and open. And a lot of the Brene Brown concepts I think play out in healing. So that's part of my intention to decrease suffering somehow.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] And I may have forgotten to Mention it. Do you have involvement in the Mormon Church's addiction recovery program as well?

Erika Nordfelt [00:05:24] And that wasn't in my outline, but yes, I have personal stories to add to that.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] And that's something that. I mean, if you go to Google Maps and you type in addiction recovery in Utah or Idaho, thousands of sort of Alcoholics Anonymous equivalent groups started by the Mormon Church to help cure the addiction of masturbation. They're everywhere. And I think that's something that needs to be continually discussed.

Erika Nordfelt [00:05:55] Yes. Willing to do that.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] All right.

Erika Nordfelt [00:05:58] Thoughts and opinions there, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] All right. All right. Well, Erica Nordfelt, where does your Mormon story begin? Maybe should we start with your parents or.

Growing Up Mormon: Family and Childhood

Erika Nordfelt [00:06:05] Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:06] Okay.

Erika Nordfelt [00:06:08] Both raised in the church. Both. And I feel so bad. I was thinking of this. I'm like, where was immigration? Was it my grandparents? And I'm sure if siblings or family members watch this, they're gonna be like, Erica, you should know these things. I believe well. So my grandparents, for the most part, were traditional believing members. My mom's father wasn't, but he was about to convert, I believe, right before he passed. He passed while she was young and. But yet he was, I think, taking the discussions during that time. Regardless, my parents were raised in the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] What location?

Erika Nordfelt [00:06:45] Utah. So my dad was Pleasant Grove, not too far. And my mom was Cedar City. I feel like she lived in Ephraim, too.

John Dehlin [00:06:55] So your dad, Utah county area, your mom Southern Utah.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:58] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [00:06:58] Okay. Yes. So that was the majority of. Yeah. Their experiences. And, you know, they met. They were very classically devout. Not ultra like, as far as my upbringing, we were. We were devout, we were very attending. We went to all of the things we weren't rigid in the fact of, like, had to wear. And it's funny. Cause my experience of rigid Mormon practice probably has changed a bit since I've lived in Rexburg for so long. Grew up in Colorado, so my parents lived in a couple other places, but basically settled in Durango, Colorado. And the church there was very small and rigid. Orthodox Mormons. Maybe wasn't what you would see in other places. Again, very faithful people. But yeah, we wouldn't have to wear our church clothes all day or, you

John Dehlin [00:07:50] know, Sunday on Sunday.

Erika Nordfelt [00:07:51] Yes, all day on Sunday, yes. Drinking caffeine maybe wasn't this abhorrent sin or. I'm trying to think of other. My dad occasionally would watch rated R movies. I didn't a whole lot. But that was more of a personal choice because I was making my choices. That wasn't seen as like, who such a, you know, Deviant, sinful thing, but yet still very devout. Very. And still are. You know, they have served several missions.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:19] They.

Erika Nordfelt [00:08:19] Yeah. Attend. Unless. Unless you're sick or traveling for some reason. That was in my rule book as far as like you have to church, attend church. Unless. And those were kind of the acceptable reasons to not go to church. You accepted every calling. Like, this is what was somewhat patterned to me from my parents of this is how you live the gospel. It was discussed often in our house. Had several sisters that served missions. So that was, I guess, the climate that they.

Margi Dehlin [00:08:54] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:08:54] That they created for us. I have four sisters, very female, but we grew up on a farm, so we weren't. There was a lot of female energy. But it's funny, we weren't necessarily high maintenance women, I guess you could say we did fair and 4H and chores and we definitely learned to work hard regardless of gender. That wasn't even an option because we were the only children.

John Dehlin [00:09:20] Basically a little women household.

Erika Nordfelt [00:09:22] Yes, yes. Yeah. With maybe more dirt and less dresses

Margi Dehlin [00:09:27] and maybe more animals.

Erika Nordfelt [00:09:28] And more animals.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] What type of farm?

Erika Nordfelt [00:09:31] Yes, it was kind of a hobby farm, but we all did four farm. We did four H projects every summer. So there was livestock of varying degrees throughout the year.

John Dehlin [00:09:40] So wait, was your mom a tradwife before? Trad wife was cool, is that what you're saying?

Erika Nordfelt [00:09:44] Possibly. That's so funny. We had goats at one point and she would milk it and sell the milk she would make.

John Dehlin [00:09:51] She was ballerina farm before.

Erika Nordfelt [00:09:52] Ballerina farm before. It was cool. That's actually like. That's kind of affectionate to me because she was really good at the whole domestic role. I think there was a lot of meaning in that for her. And I don't know if I really followed that path. Not that I feel like I have to, but yeah, she thrived in that role and enjoyed not only taking care of us as children and teaching us, you know, righteous principles, but being self sustaining and. Yeah, yeah, I guess she was Ballerina farms. That's funny.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] So five sisters total.

Erika Nordfelt [00:10:29] So five girls? Four sisters, five girls, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] Okay. Yeah, that's what I meant. And you're where in the birth order?

Erika Nordfelt [00:10:36] I'm four.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] Number four out of five. Okay, okay.

Erika Nordfelt [00:10:38] The older three were somewhat close in age and then a little bit like three or four years and then me and then three or four years and then one more.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Okay. So anything formative about your personal Mormon upbringing that's worth mentioning?

Erika Nordfelt [00:10:51] I feel like it was really positive and there was a lot of Mormon themes to it, but Nothing. I don't feel like I internalized a whole lot of shame, which was a wonderful gift. We felt pretty close. My mom, actually, she. To add to her skills, she babysat a lot of the neighbor kids after school. So I got to ride the bus home with a bunch of other friends and play with them until their parents came and picked them up. So, like, I had fun. Like, I just remember a lot of playfulness in my years and we would be outside and playing in the fields or dress up downstairs because we had so many dress ups.

Erika Nordfelt [00:11:32] And so, like I would say the elementary age was very positive. I. I do see a positive and meaningful, like, perception of God and my relationship to family members and a lot of those, like, primary themes. Primary, you know, children themes. I enjoyed, I enjoyed going to church, but. But in our community, again, we were the minority.

Erika Nordfelt [00:11:57] So I had a lot of friends that were non members throughout all of my time in Durango. And that was great, good relationships there. I didn't feel judged or ostracized. I did feel a little bit different because we were a peculiar people. Of course, I was taught to feel a little bit different, but I don't think there was at that stage really any negative connotations with any of that. So, yeah, it was pretty positive childhood, I guess, and then up into the teens, still a lot of positive experiences. But I think at that point I was really identif. I was developing this identity that was more attached to my faith.

Erika Nordfelt [00:12:34] So I wasn't just, you know, Erica the teenager. I was Erica the Mormon example. And most of my friends were non members. Great people, still have wonderful relationships with them and they were very respectful. I didn't feel pressured to do anything or be anything other than what I was.

Erika Nordfelt [00:12:52] The funny thing is there was Mormons. Maybe I was trying to count the other night, I was like, how many people did I graduate in my graduating class? There was possibly like six to eight other Mormons that I graduated out of a class of like 300. Yeah. So very, very few. And I was friends with them because, of course, our Ward was a Ward family. Like, we grew up together, we did all the activities together. And that was a huge part of like, yeah, my Mormon experience. But it overlapped a lot of other wonderful relationships that I had. But in those relationships, I remember I made a post after.

Erika Nordfelt [00:13:33] It was years after high school. But I had felt like my friends knew me, but they didn't know all of me because of this piece of my spirituality that was so meaningful that I didn't share too Much with my non member friends. And it's interesting looking back because now I'm like, oh, I get why I felt like they didn't know all of me, but now being on the other side of religion, they absolutely knew me. Like, I'm not different now that that piece of me is different. I still have this spiritual element to me that also existed there. And so it's just interesting to see that there was this, I guess, area of my life where I felt like people didn't know me because they didn't know the religious piece of me. And yet I still am who I am and they did very much know me.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] I really relate just because I'm connecting with this. I actually feel like the best of Mormonism in the United States is being raised outside of Utah or Idaho because Mormonism isn't everywhere. But you're raised in a cool little town and you're raised in a ward and in a family that's not too intense because then Mormonism is the salt to the meal of life instead of being the meal itself. And if you can find that balance of being raised outside of Utah and Idaho in a cool town with a not too intense ward or family, I think that's almost perfect.

Erika Nordfelt [00:14:58] Yes. Yeah, it is. It's the sweet piece because I think it brought in a lot of meaning to my life that I maybe wasn't going to get from different pockets.

John Dehlin [00:15:05] Community meaning, structure. Right?

Erika Nordfelt [00:15:07] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it made me different. And there's something actually unique of like, oh, she's the Mormon girl. What does that mean?

John Dehlin [00:15:16] That's crucial for identity formation.

Erika Nordfelt [00:15:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:18] Is to have something that makes you unique.

Erika Nordfelt [00:15:20] However, it had kind of like a painful underbelly. I wouldn't say like ugly, but because I was the Mormon kid and all of my friends were non members, they didn't date me. And I didn't actually even really believe that until later. And I, you know, discussed with some friends, they're like, yeah, of course, Erica. They didn't hook up. They didn't want to date you because, you know, traditional things that they maybe wanted in those relationships, like making out and having sex, they knew wasn't something you wanted to do. So there was an element of respect, which I appreciate. But I'm also like, well, just because I put out, no one wanted to date me. Like, I have some issues around cons. Like, I have issues around that being really shallow for these teenage boys. But.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Because you didn't put out.

Erika Nordfelt [00:16:04] Yes, because I didn't put out in their mind. Yes. Yeah, yes. So it's like, oh, you didn't even

John Dehlin [00:16:09] have a chance to see whether you would or would not, right?

Erika Nordfelt [00:16:11] Yes, exactly. But teenage boys and teenage girls are all shallow. So I shouldn't be too surprised by that. The problem was I internalized at that point that I was undesirable, that I wasn't lovable in that way. I felt very loved by family members and friends, but I wasn't dateable because no one was asking me to date. And that Mormon piece of it didn't compute for me. It just became personal. Like, it just must be me. So even though I had a lot of positive and fun and fulfilling experiences in my teenage years, there was a deep cut around that for me that even now, like, as I talk about it, and I've been married for 21 years to a wonderful man who's loved me incredibly, there's still like this pain of ouch.

Erika Nordfelt [00:17:00] That I a little bit believe it. Because that's what happens is those internalized negative beliefs. I wasn't able to recognize that they were treating me differently because I was the Mormon girl.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:13] So within your family system, like, would your parents have been supportive of you dating non Mormon boys? Would they have been open to that and supportive? Because the other thing that when you're outside Utah is the pool can be quite small of who you can date, which can then like this message or belief you kind of created in. In lieu of that.

Erika Nordfelt [00:17:39] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:39] Being that you're undesirable. Can happen so often, I think, because of that.

Erika Nordfelt [00:17:44] Yeah. That is such a good question. And I would love to hear how my parents would answer that. Because as I'm hearing you, I'm not coming up with an immediate, like answer. It makes me ponder. I feel like, yes, because the pool was really so low. I don't think they could have had those expectations of you should only date a Mormon boy. Because if that was the case, they would know we wouldn't date hardly anybody.

Erika Nordfelt [00:18:07] So they probably were more open minded to that, but yet probably also had some specific requirements of the type of boy that they would want for us. And interestingly enough, so three sisters ahead and one sister below, none of us did a whole lot of dating, a little bit here and there and definitely crushes and got taken to dances, which. It's funny, where I grew up, this is also such a different difference from Rexburg, Idaho. Prom was really the only dance that people in Durango made a big deal. In Rexburg, there's a dance every month and I'm buying things for my Kids to go to these dances every month, and it's exhausting.

Erika Nordfelt [00:18:49] So it's like, growing up, we still had these positive, I would say more traditional experiences around dating, but we did not really have an exclusive partner. Also, this is another weird. I feel like it. I didn't realize until, like, I left Durango that it's like, oh, this was kind of unique to this area, or maybe it was Colorado at large. But in my experience in the Mormon belt, I will say people date casually until they date exclusively. You know, they go on a lot of dates, and during a. They didn't take you on dates. You hung out and you went to parties, and you maybe would hook up, and then you'd become a thing.

Erika Nordfelt [00:19:30] So I wasn't coming, going to parties. I was maybe hanging out with people, but I wasn't going down the line of, this is how you get a boyfriend. So that also was probably counting against me because that's how couples were formed, which is a little bit different than you see in other areas. Yeah, but of course, then that perpetuates still more like, oh, I'm undateable. I'm not putting all these pieces of sociology together.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:57] Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

Erika Nordfelt [00:19:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] So is there anything you want to share about your spiritual development during those high school years that would be relevant to your story?

Erika Nordfelt [00:20:07] So glad you asked. So, again, like, yes, I was finding this identity of being the Mormon girl and finding a lot of pride in that. I was probably Laurel President, you know, very involved, even though sometimes I was also a dancer. A very. A very involved dancer. And I would dance like 10 to 15 hours sometimes in some weeks when I was really involved with it. What style of dance it was so competitive. It was tap, jazz and lyrical and sometimes modern dance.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:34] Oh, how fun.

Erika Nordfelt [00:20:35] Which was really just. It was. It was. I actually went on to major in dance for a little bit in college, and then life took me a different place.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] Was this before the so youo Think youk Can Dance craze?

Erika Nordfelt [00:20:44] Yes, it is. But I got way into that and watched it real hard when that came in. I loved it. But because I danced so much, I didn't always make it to mutuals, which there was maybe some controversy around how people saw that choice, but I was super dedicated.

John Dehlin [00:21:00] For those who don't know, Mutuals is Mormon youth group.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:02] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [00:21:03] So, like, the weekly activity that we would do with our. Our age groups. So I still wanted to. I was still committed, but I didn't always make it to those activities. But again, I was at church. I was fulfilling callings. I went to efy. EFY was pretty formative for me as it is for a lot of people. It's a youth camp, essentially.

John Dehlin [00:21:22] Mormon youth camp.

Erika Nordfelt [00:21:23] Yeah. And I went as a participant and then went back as a counselor, then went back as a speaker. I loved the EFY program, which is funny looking back. I have mixed emotions, positive ones and some maybe critical ones. But at the time, it was like, everyone's Mormon. They all get it, and they all feel like there was this really synergetic meaning around being with so many other Mormon kids.

Margi Dehlin [00:21:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] Even your steak. Even your steak wouldn't have the intensely populated Mormon youth experience that any FY would.

Erika Nordfelt [00:21:58] Yeah, no, because they know how to do it at efi.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:01] They do. And it's such a heightened experience.

Erika Nordfelt [00:22:04] Yes, it is. And it definitely evokes a lot of emotion, which now I have a little bit of issue with that. That is seen as the spirit, and that's serving them of, like, all of this connection and synergy is God. And that's maybe a misrepresentation, but that's sure how I perceived it.

John Dehlin [00:22:20] Feels like God.

Erika Nordfelt [00:22:20] Yeah, Feels like God.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:22] And not just God, but like, Mormon God.

Erika Nordfelt [00:22:24] Yes, Mormon God and the Holy Ghost. And those testimony meetings were just like, wow, I feel so strong. But there's vulnerability, like, there's connection, there's honesty. Like, all of that is a wonderful recipe for emotional elevation. Deal goods. Right. So. But again, at the time, I loved it. Loved it. Felt such great meaning. And that was a really good segue, whether it's EFY or just kind of my teenage years at large into. Okay, what happens after, you know, going into college and furthering that, I would say, Mormon identity of myself.

John Dehlin [00:23:03] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:23:03] It just perpetuated forward. So went to byu, Idaho.

Dance, Embodiment, and Mormon Modesty

Margi Dehlin [00:23:10] Can I ask you a quick question before we go in? So you mentioned dance. Yes. And I could see this tying into the theme a little bit, dance and your relationship to your own body. Do you want to share kind of your insights as to your experience that way? Because I think for many women, young women growing up, modesty can make them a little bit dissociate. Like, dissociate a little bit from their body as opposed to being in your body. Yes. So. And I can see dancing, having a little bit of both. What was it like for you?

Erika Nordfelt [00:23:46] That's a fascinating question. And that kind of just brings me more to, like, the thought at large of modesty and maybe my experience of that, because I think there was my experience of body image in the dance world. And modesty in the Mormon or in my home life and then a whole lot of like interlapse. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:24:02] With just modesty at large again. My family wasn't ultra rigid. I could wear shorts and I could wear shorter shorts. I didn't wear Daisy Dukes, but I didn't have to be to my knees. I could wear tank tops. And this wasn't even like.

Erika Nordfelt [00:24:14] The funny thing is it's like somehow we all caught onto this. But it was never like, no, you can't wear that and you can only wear that. I don't remember those comments from my parents. We could wear tank tops, but we couldn't wear the spaghetti strap tank tops. Like it had to have more of a thicker band. And maybe that was just rules I made for myself. So there was modesty, but it wasn't, I would say, ultra, ultra.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] As it is more now.

Erika Nordfelt [00:24:35] Yes, as it is more now. But with that there's still that awareness of like, okay, how is my body received? What is appropriate and what is inappropriate? What is it gonna make the boys think? You know, I was still getting all those messages from church. I think with the dance world just in general, man, it's kind of a nightmare when it comes to body image for any dancer. Like it still is. Like I've worked with dancy dancers that are clients and it's an unfortun really rough environment to build positive body image. So I definitely suffered from that, I would say. And I had, you know, we never are as appreciative of the bodies we have until 10 years later. Or in my case like 25 years later. I had a wonderful, like I had a rockin body and I never felt like it was enough.

John Dehlin [00:25:22] Youth is wasted on the yard.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:23] I know, but there can be grief there. I think for a lot of women when they're older. Looking back. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:25:29] The overlay though would be in. I think there were situations where I didn't feel like it was okay to actually even like or cherish or feel sexy in my body or attractive. So there were some experiences again with my wonderful non Mormon friends. That was very classic. Okay, we're going to go to the lake. Erica, you should wear a bikini. You look like they were complimented. Like, why are you not wearing a bikini in their eyes? It's like, why not? This is very culturally normal. I'm always in these like speedo one pieces that are highly unflattering.

Erika Nordfelt [00:26:01] And so at one point I'm like, okay, giving into the peer pressure. And I found probably the most modest two piece that could exist back then in the 90s and it was like the boy shorts. And actually nowadays there's far more covering two pieces. But they didn't exist then. Like, the high waist wasn't a thing. And the lower tops, like, kind of the crop tops, that wasn't part of the fashion.

Erika Nordfelt [00:26:24] So I wore a bikini. But, man, I felt like I better not let anyone in the Mormon circles know this. This isn't okay. Like, I didn't feel empowered by it. I didn't allow myself to appreciate how I looked and not in any, like, arrogant way. More in the sense of, like, it's okay to enjoy my body, to appreciate it, appreciate it, feel comfortable in it. And I think there's a small amount of that is. Is somewhat robbed within certain conservative cultures. This is not isolated to Mormonism, but, like, to feel attractive y. That I think it can be pretty empowering for women or men that it's like, it's okay to actually, like, I like how I look not to flaunt, but to, like, feel empowered.

Erika Nordfelt [00:27:09] I did not allow that actually, for years, well into my marriage, that I did not allow that for myself. So dance was a piece of it, but it was a bit more complex than just my experience in dancing.

Margi Dehlin [00:27:20] Okay, and just to follow up, what was your experience of if any of actually what it felt like to be in your body dancing was that hard to parse apart? Because I can see there is very much a sense of showmanship, of like, you're showing up for an audience, for the people watching, but in something like, lyrical or I'm just. When it's more to convey maybe an emotion or a. Did you have moments of actually being fully in your body that you can remember? Was that something that happened for you so that you had that experience, which I think is very. It can be tied to sexuality kind of. Yeah. As you can.

Erika Nordfelt [00:28:05] As well as just, I would say, intuition or like, meaningful movie moving experiences as humans. Absolutely. Yes, I did. And I didn't really experience, like, I definitely had maybe body dysmorphia issues, but I don't think I ever felt associative when I was dancing. It was a creative form of expression for me that was so powerful and moving to the point, like, even again, talking about.

Erika Nordfelt [00:28:30] Moved me so deeply that it definitely evoked emotion. There was one point, again, I was on a myriad of different teams, but one team that was particularly competitive and more advanced that our coach, she had choreographed this beautiful number that was somewhat a tribute to one of the other dance members, mothers, that was lost and in it, there's one of the dancers was kind of a solo piece. And so she's doing different things. And then the whole rest of the chorus of dancers are dancing with her. And one point, we were, like, lifting her high, like, in just this beautiful metaphorical way of, like, love and support.

Erika Nordfelt [00:29:10] And it was so powerful. Like, all of the dancers were just crying afterwards because that type of movement and experience within our bodies without words was so powerful. So. Yes. And spiritual, I would say, like, that was a beginning of recognizing spirituality. Doesn't have to be religious because the power that I felt with the connection with my body, the connection with the other dancers. How is that not spiritual? Absolutely spiritual. As well as, like, looking at that back, honing into this inner knowing of self of, like, who am I in this moment being kind of in line with, I would say integrity or others or moments, like, very mindful.

Erika Nordfelt [00:29:57] Yes. Present and beautiful. Mindful power, I think, in those moments. So, yeah, I absolutely had that in dance, and that only carried through. I only majored in dance for a semester. And again, my life kind of took different paths, which were good and needed. There's some grief. And I haven't experienced that to that degree kind of since that phase of my life.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:20] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:30:21] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:21] Thank you for sharing that.

John Dehlin [00:30:22] Yeah. So you were jumping from high school to college, but. But maybe in terms of, let's just say, Mormon doctrine in theology, Mormon history, truth claim stuff. Where would you say you were by the end of high school? I'm assuming you did seminary and all that?

Erika Nordfelt [00:30:40] Yes, I did faithful seminary. And interestingly enough, again, even though Durango was very small, Mormon populated, we had release time. Which school? Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:30:50] That meant you tell people what that means.

Erika Nordfelt [00:30:52] So we. I was able to use seminary as an elective credit in high school. In high school, instead of. Because in places where they don't allow that, you have to wake up super early in the morning to go to seminary. So I didn't have to do that, but.

John Dehlin [00:31:05] So instead of taking art.

Erika Nordfelt [00:31:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] You would leave for an hour, go with the other Mormon kids, and get religious instruction five days a week as part of your high school experience.

Erika Nordfelt [00:31:14] Exactly. But by the time I was a senior, I was like. I wanted to take art too. I was a little bummed of, like.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:20] But both.

Erika Nordfelt [00:31:21] I could do so many other cool classes. I wanted to do both because I had a lot of those other interests that I didn't get. I didn't have enough credits. So, yes.

John Dehlin [00:31:29] It kind of blows my mind that in public schools that's allowed even In Utah. I know, right?

Erika Nordfelt [00:31:34] I know.

John Dehlin [00:31:34] Because you're missing out on important education that's not religious. You know what I mean?

Erika Nordfelt [00:31:39] Yeah. And especially like Djangos are rather liberal, progressive area. It's similar to, I would say Jackson ish. Like a lot of affluence, a lot of tourism, beautiful place, loved living there. But it is a bit surprising that it's like oh, that they would allow that that there wasn't maybe more of a rigid separation between church and state in the schools. But I mean that's what it was. I don't think it still is. I guess someone will have to tell us if they still live there.

Erika Nordfelt [00:32:07] So truth claims and all of that. I only knew what I was told, which at that point was all of the curriculum and you know, did not know anything about Joseph Smith and in terms of his. Of true lives. Yes. Of his true history. I knew, you know, the first vision just as it was taught to us and I, I ate it all up. I believed everything pretty, pretty willingly. Not because I think I was gullible, just because like I wanted to be the best disciple there was. Meaning it wasn't even because I think there's some people that it's like, okay, I'm following in line and I'm kind of just doing what I'm told like I want.

Erika Nordfelt [00:32:51] There was a deep energy of following it because it had meaning for me instead of just like, oh, I'm just, you know, this is what is expected of me. So anything I was taught, I was like awesome, I want to learn more. And even though it's not like I was never really good at reading my scriptures, I was never really maybe good at some of like I say, the Mormon practices. I prayed a whole lot, I was good at that.

Erika Nordfelt [00:33:14] And yet you know, listening to talks or lessons or conference, I was there, I was there of like, please feed me, feed me, help me feel closer to Jesus. I want all of that.

Sexual Shame and Spiritual Life in High School

John Dehlin [00:33:26] And did you feel close to Heavenly Father and Jesus?

Erika Nordfelt [00:33:28] Yeah, I definitely did. I felt loved. I felt an especial sweet kinship to Jesus because I never had a brother. So I was like, he's my brother, he can be my brother and he loves me so much. You know, I had my own perception of what that relationship was that I'm sure is very similar to a lot of people of very loving, very kind, very non judgmental someone that's rooting me on. I felt that pretty deeply. And separately I felt a loving presence of God. But I experienced those. I know some people maybe enmesh that even though I know that's not Mormon doctrine, some people feel like it's hard to separate. I felt them very separately. Like I felt like I had two different relationships with God and Jesus. And again, yeah, a lot of meaning in that.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] And so I'm not. Because you weren't dating. I'm not hearing a lot of church imposed shame in those high school years.

Erika Nordfelt [00:34:23] No, I mean, there's definitely a lot of purity culture messages of, you know, learning what masturbation. I guess we can pull in some sexual concepts. Of like, there was a lesson when I was somewhere in the high school years around masturbation from our bishop, and I didn't even know what that was. I was like, oh my gosh, okay, is that something I've done before? How do I feel?

Margi Dehlin [00:34:46] You know?

Erika Nordfelt [00:34:46] And he said it in a very general way that is still kind of like uncertain. What is he meaning? My parents didn't have a whole lot of direct conversations around any of that. And there's kind of funny stories about that leading up until marriage, but so I was left to kind of wonder. And I didn't get good information from anyone else other than my sexually active friends. But I'm maybe not probing them for all of these details. Cause I'm like, oh, well, I'm accepting of them. That's their life choice. But that's not my life choice.

Margi Dehlin [00:35:20] So.

Erika Nordfelt [00:35:21] Okay, so not internalized shame. But I guess there was flavors of like, sexual shame because of purity culture. Of like, okay, I'm female. Where's my role in this? You know, modesty concepts. And I'm trying to think what other. Yeah. What's appropriate and what's not. Maybe beginnings of my own experience of my own sexuality. Like, you know, if I like something or if I'm aroused, how. I'm starting to wonder about that. But nothing super overt. I didn't have really opportunities for experiences with partners and on my own. I wasn't really exploring anything either.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:03] So that kind of part of yourself, your sexual self, would you say that was a quite undeveloped part of yourself?

Erika Nordfelt [00:36:12] Highly undeveloped. Which, you know, now, years down the road and working with so many clients, I feel like is unfortunately a different form of kind of sexual neglect.

Margi Dehlin [00:36:24] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [00:36:24] Especially for women.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] Like immaturity, like stunted growth maybe.

Erika Nordfelt [00:36:28] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:36:29] I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Erika Nordfelt [00:36:30] Yeah, just like going on kind of the neglect definition, you know, I wasn't given opportunities to learn and grow and maybe be nourished, you know, not given that nurturing energy around who Am I. How, how do I feel sexually? And this is leading up again, even years into my marriage that I'm supposed to be kind and, and pure and non erotic. Completely non erotic. Because that's, that's slutty or that's going too far. But in, in those high school years, I feel like those were baby thoughts that continue to evolve from there.

John Dehlin [00:37:10] Makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:10] Yeah.

Deciding Against a Mission and Early Adulthood

John Dehlin [00:37:11] Okay, so I guess mission or college or both. Yeah, or neither.

Erika Nordfelt [00:37:17] Some. I guess I'll start with the mission thing. I didn't go on a mission. I met my husband pretty early on and I had very complex emotions about that. Not that I was. Well, I guess okay, sorry. Because I didn't meet him. Right. I went to byu Idaho and it was a similar experience to EFY of like I remember going to get registered with my mom and we went to the registrar's office and they're like, oh, whatever question he had, go see brother so and so in registration. I was like, we looked at each other and we're like, they said brother so and so like they call each other brother and sister here.

Erika Nordfelt [00:37:51] Like that was not only surprising, but like we found our people and my mom didn't feel that way. I know she had already had, she went to byu, she'd had those experiences. But for me I was like, what? Wow, this is so cool.

John Dehlin [00:38:05] I also, it's like Oz. It's like Dorothy going to Oz.

Erika Nordfelt [00:38:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:38:08] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:38:09] Which unfortunately didn't last too long. I graduated early, so I graduated halfway through my senior year and went to BYU, Idaho right away. So I was only 17 and that wasn't cause I was any highly academic person. I just got enough credits to graduate. And for some reason I had this message, whether it was given to me by my mom, I think a little bit but. Or it's just something I made up on my own. Like I had to get through school, get through, get things done, get things done, take as many credits as you can. So that started in high school and I graduated and went to school right away.

Erika Nordfelt [00:38:45] And I actually graduated college when I was 21, like right on the nose. Four years later I was able to finish up. But because I went halfway through the year, like I kind of didn't have those new student orientation. There was a little bit of that, but it was of sort far less involved.

Erika Nordfelt [00:39:02] I was in an apartment with wonderful people, but they were not social at all. And I was highly social, highly outgoing. And so I was in this apartment, but I wasn't really outgoing enough to go and make friends mid year in college all by myself.

Erika Nordfelt [00:39:17] So I felt kind of depressed and didn't get out a whole lot. So that first semester of BYU Idaho was rather depressing. Like, I missed home, missed my friends from home, and. And the magical Oz didn't last long, at least for that semester. But I found my groove in semesters after. Lived with different people, got involved with different things, changed my major. There was a lot of positive things that were happening.

Erika Nordfelt [00:39:45] And so it was about, I guess, a year and a half or two years that I met my husband. We met at a rock climbing gym, which is very cool.

John Dehlin [00:39:54] What's it called?

Erika Nordfelt [00:39:55] It was Sticks and Stones. It was a combined shop that. It was a rock climbing gym and a snowboard and skateboard shop. So they had two names. It was Sticks and Stones and Sled Shed, which Sled Shed still there, but Sticks and Stones isn't there. But they had a climbing night. And I was very. Up to that point, I was getting far more involved in outdoor recreation. I had changed my major to outdoor. Well, it was the recreation leadership. So I was getting into rock climbing. And I met him. And I was only 20 and about six months. Well, let's see. We met in November, we got engaged in April, and by August we were married.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] And he had served a mission.

Erika Nordfelt [00:40:39] He had served a mission, all of those things. If I hadn't had met him, I absolutely would have served a mission to the point, like, I was so dedicated to that. Both of my parents had served a mission, which is pretty unique for my mom. Yeah, she served in Central America, was her mission. Isn't that crazy? That whole region was her mission.

John Dehlin [00:40:57] Yeah, that was the single mission.

Erika Nordfelt [00:40:59] And my dad went to Japan. And so I think for me, I just thought everyone. I didn't have this concept of boys go on missions and girls maybe can. It was like, oh, we. Unless we get married, everyone goes on missions. So that was kind of part of my vision for myself. And I don't at all regret meeting my husband. We were.

Erika Nordfelt [00:41:18] We were best friends initially, like, kind of from the start. It is and has been a really good relationship and very beautiful. I just wished at that point that it had waited. I wanted both, right? I wanted to go on a mission and get married because I was like, I would have been a damn good missionary. I knew that when they changed the age.

Erika Nordfelt [00:41:41] I'm trying to think how, like, I probably had been married two or three years and they changed it to 19. I bawled. I remember, like watching conference and hearing that announcement. I just bawled and bawled. And it wasn't like how beautiful the church is growing. It was like, I could have gone, I could have done both. And I don't know, maybe Brady wouldn't have waited for me. Sometimes I tease him, would you have waited for me?

Erika Nordfelt [00:42:06] But I really, really, again, that was a way to take all of this meaning, all of this discipleship, and serve the Lord. And so I had lovely dreams of what a mission would look like. And then we got. When we got married, I was like, okay, we're gonna go on a lot of missions when we're done. Like, this is something you're promising me because I'm following through with the script that I'm supposed to get married instead of wait. And he was sweet and promised me things. And who knows? I think we're going to go on our own definitions of missions once we're retired. But that was actually like a soft spot for me.

Erika Nordfelt [00:42:45] Kind of a bruise in the heart of, why couldn't God let me do both? Because I wanted both just as much as any, and I didn't get to do both.

Courtship, Marriage, and Early Married Life

Margi Dehlin [00:42:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] So you said you met in what month?

Erika Nordfelt [00:43:03] November. Right before Thanksgiving break, actually. Because I remember on Thanksgiving break talking to my family of like, oh, I went on this date with this guy and I kind of liked it. And they weren't paying attention at the time. They didn't really care. But I was like, buzzing a little bit from our first date. And then after that break, we really just kind of were never separated. We didn't do the dtr. For those that know.

John Dehlin [00:43:29] Define the relationship.

Erika Nordfelt [00:43:30] Define the relationship. When I went up to Idaho, I realized there was all these acronyms in Mormonism that did not exist in Colorado. Dtr, rm. So DTR defined the relationship. If it's conversation of, like, how are we? Where are we in our relationship? An RM's a returned missionary. A preemie is a pre missionary. I didn't know any of these things.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] Was NCMO a term?

Erika Nordfelt [00:43:51] Yes, yes, yes. Non Committal Makeout. That was a term. I didn't do that, John. Cause I was good.

John Dehlin [00:43:56] Of course I didn't.

Erika Nordfelt [00:43:58] So, yeah, once after that break, our relationship just kind of hit the round running. We were engaged right before the end of the semester, which is towards the end of April. And then I was actually going. I mean, to add to another piece, I was working at an outdoor church camp. The BYU Idaho had a camp called Badger Creek that now they have different versions of it that actually aren't sponsored by the church anymore, but have carried on that are Called ofy. So it's somewhat of an efy, it's outdoors.

Erika Nordfelt [00:44:31] So it was a version of that that I was already committed to work at that summer. And he was going on what was called Expedition, this six week adventure course, going all over southern Utah and doing lots of things and through. And he was able to get credit for that. So we were both, like, going in different places for a majority of the summer, which is so hard. That was way hard. Even though those were positive experiences. Like, we probably would have gotten married earlier, but we had to wait until after those commitments to come back and get married.

Erika Nordfelt [00:45:05] And, yeah, that was really hard to be separated from him during that time. I was, as is with, I think, a lot of engaged Mormons, it's like, let's do this. Like, we're not messing around. I didn't feel it as much of like, oh, I want this so I can have sex with you. But it was just like, you're my best friend. I just want to spend all my time with you anyways, like, let's do this. I wasn't really concerned about my wedding. I think I did it pretty simply because I was like, yes.

Erika Nordfelt [00:45:30] Like, I just want. I just want to be your wife and I want to be together. And so that was kind of my energy towards that. But I had to wait that summer until we could finally get married.

John Dehlin [00:45:40] So not a lot of shame aspects introduced in your courtship?

Erika Nordfelt [00:45:45] Well, we were aware we would have conversations of, like, okay, what is appropriate and what isn't? And we maybe. Which is a surprise because, I'll be honest, I maybe wasn't, as is a lot of people. I had had dating experiences up until my husband, where I probably did have to go talk to the bishop and get with my husband. I didn't. We were committed to keep clean. I'm doing quotations for those that can't see me. Keep clean enough so that we wouldn't have to postpone our wedding. That's a big risk. That's really embarrassing. There's a lot of shame with that for sure.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Because in Mormonism, if you go too far, your bishop may.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:28] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:46:28] Revoke your temple recommend.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] And then you have to tell everybody we said this date, but now it's that date. And everyone's assuming they fill in the blanks as to why.

Erika Nordfelt [00:46:37] An unfortunate, sad experience for people that I just hate to see play out. But we luckily were okay and we made it there and there wasn't. Yeah, I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of sexual shame, maybe from Some of those previous experiences I had had of, like, oh, because again, I had zero physical affection experience. So there were some guys I dated that maybe were more forward, and I didn't know what my boundaries were. Nothing was inappropriate or abusive. But, okay, I'm supposed to be nothing. And now all of a sudden, someone's showing me affection. It's like, oh, this feels good. But also it's like, at what point.

Erika Nordfelt [00:47:16] Point does it. Either do I want to stop it because of my values, or do I want to stop it because I'm not interested in that or that's not pleasurable to me? Like, I did not know how to do any of that. Which, again, I think is probably really common for a lot of Mormon females that they aren't taught consent neither.

Erika Nordfelt [00:47:33] This is not a gendered thing. Nobody's taught consent. And that is very harmful on multiple levels for either partner. And at its worst, I know you guys have addressed this. At its worst, it totally leans into rape culture. So that wasn't necessarily my experience that extreme. But flavors of that, for sure, of like, oh, say no or I'm done, or I just want them to be happy. Like, being able to have a clear voice.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:00] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:48:01] And, yeah. Boundaries around myself. I didn't know any of that. And I guess I was. I have a hard time with the word blessed, but I'm gonna use it. Blessed that it didn't. That it wasn't more harmful. It was more uncomfortable in a learning experience.

Erika Nordfelt [00:48:16] And yet, when I came to my husband, it was very different. I don't know. He asked to kiss me, and it was. We'd been on multiple dates, which, in my experience with some other guys, it's like there was no way they would have waited that long to try to kiss me. And he asked, is it okay if I kiss you? And I was like, oh, you're so sweet. That's so nice. And others might think that's not very romantic or sexy, but I loved that. I thought that was so respectful. And we had our cute little kiss on the side of the building, actually, of the Rock Gym where we had first met.

Erika Nordfelt [00:48:49] And it was very sweet. So there was a lot of respect there, I think, in that relationship. That didn't make it overly hard, but there were flavors of sexual shame. Ish. And, I mean. And Brady's story, we'll get to that was probably a bit different. I don't know if that was relevant to us. But, yeah, like, that would overlap with my story as we carry forward.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:10] Yeah. I just had a quick question. About your own awareness with regard to physical touch. If that was something you grew up, you know, with a lot of affection, a lot of kind of physical touch. Did you appreciate that? What the culture of your. And then you kind of coming into your own at college, what you felt with regard to that?

Erika Nordfelt [00:49:34] Yeah. That's fascinating that you asked that. It's actually something me and Brady were kind of discussing on the way down. Just in like how we, you know, express physical touch with our kids or with each other. Yeah. How that showed up in our house. My family was very affectionate. I would say again, a house full of women. My dad kind of didn't have a choice, but yet he was. He's a very affectionate person.

Erika Nordfelt [00:49:56] I remember multiple times, just anytime you'd sit next to him, I was holding his hand or I was snuggling into him, hugging. Anytime we saw each other left. Maybe not when I lived at home, but definitely since, like there's no time I visited my parents without a whole lot of hugs and a lot of comfort with that.

Erika Nordfelt [00:50:16] I'm trying to think even kissing, like sometimes on the cheeks or my dad sometimes will still kiss me on the lips and that's appropriate. That's not inappropriate in any way. That's just affection.

John Dehlin [00:50:28] I kiss my dad on the lips.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:29] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:50:29] Okay. I know that's maybe not as common in American culture. In other cultures it very much is. But like, that's a normal thing for me. And that doesn't feel weird or anything. He doesn't kiss my kids, but he kisses me and probably my sisters and my mom maybe. I hope he kisses my mom.

Erika Nordfelt [00:50:45] So. But when that. I don't know how that would translate. I think I was comfortable with physical touch. Looking at love languages now that I have a lot more self awareness. Physical touch isn't my love language. It's far more quality time and words, affirmation. You know, if you ascribe to those theories.

Erika Nordfelt [00:51:04] I want to talk to feel close to somebody. I want to get to know them. And I'm open to physical affection. So I think that was a learning thing for me. I was probably open and warm to. It wasn't jarring because I hadn't ever had it when I was receiving anything type of affection from someone else.

Erika Nordfelt [00:51:24] But again, in the. In the. I would say romantic or sexual context, there was a lot of development for me that I still kind of had to figure out.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:34] Yeah, that makes sense to me. And I think what's interesting for a lot of people where it is maybe more of their it's important to them with regard to. If we're going to say love. Love. Language in quotations.

Erika Nordfelt [00:51:46] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:47] I'm just going real light. It's not like I described. But is that if you have. If you do feel quite physical in the way you express love and you have it in your family, your family system. I'm curious for you what you received conditioning wise, from the church about. Because I think when you start dating someone, you can experience that in a different way because you're like, oh, well, I normally like to hug and show danger, though. This is bad because attraction is sort of like, if you're attracted, you just. You have no control, right?

Erika Nordfelt [00:52:20] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:21] So did you ever have thoughts about that or. Because that wasn't maybe your main.

Erika Nordfelt [00:52:26] I think mine was a little bit flipped, but it was more of the purity culture thing of like, I actually can't want. I'm not supposed to be sexual. I'm supposed to be the pure female. And so I can't want or initiate. And it's like cognitively I can't think of really any specific examples, but like, I'm just kind of tuning into myself of how that felt back then, that there was maybe a resistance to too much affection or touch because I wasn't supposed to. I mean. And that goes with a dirty issue. Yeah, yeah. Like that's maybe too forward or that's. That's inappropriate. And that I think even spans out to, I would say, messages we get about genders at large, even outside of Mormonism, that, you know, women are. If they're overly sexual, that's not okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:14] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [00:53:15] That's not acceptable. And yet. And it's not acceptable because men want that from them and they'll maybe get misused or they're asking for it. And that all by itself bends over onto the idea that tells men that they're supposed to be overly sexual and they're supposed to want things. And so I think that definitely I was getting those messages, but then even I maybe you know, magnified under the lens of purity culture and what Mormon told females, what Mormonism told females about their sexuality. But I can't really think of anything specifically as far as like, yeah, any specific experiences around physical affection that was harmful or hard? I don't know. I don't know. I'm fumbling through my answer to that one. No, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:54:03] Okay, so y' all were married how many months into knowing each other?

Erika Nordfelt [00:54:11] I think it was eight or nine. Whatever January to August was, that's probably. It's the end of August and several

Margi Dehlin [00:54:18] months leading up to it apart. Yes. Right. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [00:54:21] We would see each other sometimes on weekends, but, yeah, the majority of that. Some those summer months, those three months, we were separated.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] So what year were you married?

Erika Nordfelt [00:54:29] 2003.

John Dehlin [00:54:30] Okay.

Erika Nordfelt [00:54:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] And do you want to talk about kind of what the contract, the marital contract was in terms of how you saw each other, each other's roles, how you saw your life going, how the church was or was not part of that arrangement. What was that?

Erika Nordfelt [00:54:53] Sure. It's so interesting. I've talked about the idea of marital agreements with couples that I work with. And I look back, what were our agreements? I don't think we had very clear, concrete conversations, but there maybe was a knowing of it. It was definitely expected that we were going to be church attendees. You know, we got married in the temple, Both of our families very involved, and that was all the expectations. And I think with that packed into, we were going to get through school, likely start to have families. I was likely to stay home. He was likely to be the breadwinner. Again, none of that was, like, decided on a.

Erika Nordfelt [00:55:35] You know, across from a table. But it was an understanding that we're kind of. We're gonna follow the Mormon script. We're gonna check the boxes. But interestingly enough, I think in that there was some nuance just to us, whether it's personalities or just our dynamic with each other that was a little bit different.

Erika Nordfelt [00:55:57] Gender roles. I mean, some of them we totally ascribed to. And I did maybe more of the cooking, cleaning. No, like, I expected him to pull his weight with that. There was. There was, I think, some interesting interactions early on in our marriage where he maybe had had some things done for him by his mom that seemed normal and expected me to do some of those things. And I was like, I'm not doing that. Like one of them with homework. She would help him sometimes with busy work for homework because she also worked on campus. So she's like, I can see your syllabus. And she's.

Erika Nordfelt [00:56:31] She could help him out and I'll do the vocabulary words or something silly like that. She wasn't doing all the coursework, but sometimes little things. And I think there was one.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] If she were here, I'd ask him if she got his eagle for him. I would ask him.

Erika Nordfelt [00:56:41] He did get his eagle for him.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] He's nodding and saying, yes, he totally

Erika Nordfelt [00:56:45] was an Eagle Scout. And she was absolutely incredible involved with that.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:49] So.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] And she called it.

Erika Nordfelt [00:56:51] She's wonderful. She really is a wonderful person. But there was Some like, oh, wait, we got to reorganize this, because I'm not going to do. I don't know where it came from, but I have this resistance towards enabling or nagging or, like, bossing around. I don't do that much with my kids either, which sometimes they maybe need that more than I do. But I wasn't going to do that for him. So I think that was of part. Just part of our dynamic negotiation when it came to sexuality in those early years. Like, we were going to be intimate. And that was the expectation we.

John Dehlin [00:57:28] And that's what Mormons call sex. They call it intimacy.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:31] Yes. Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [00:57:32] Yeah. Because sex is so charged.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Sex is a bad word in Mormons.

Erika Nordfelt [00:57:36] It is. It's too sexual, actually. So we have to say intimacy, which is so funny. I still even say it in sessions with clients. Yeah, it's very Mormon of me, I guess, to avoid that word. But, yeah, like, we were gonna have sex and we didn't have any discussions of what that looked like other than there was some book that we read about understanding. Cause I didn't know hardly anything. I maybe knew the logistics. The penis would go in the vagina. I understood that. I didn't know anything about female pleasure. Neither did he. We didn't know anything as far as, like, what to enhance desire, how to continue to evolve in our intimacy. And so that was actually really rough for us for years. And there was an imbalance in sex drive. And so, you know, we shouldn't assume

John Dehlin [00:58:21] where the imbalance was.

Erika Nordfelt [00:58:22] We don't have to. Well, we shouldn't assume, but you can classically, like, I was low desire and he was high desire. And honestly, I don't really even like those terms anymore. But I'm gonna roll with that because it's descriptive. Because women can be just as high desire as mentioned. Right. That's a fallacy.

John Dehlin [00:58:39] Or more.

Erika Nordfelt [00:58:39] Or more. Yes. They can orgasm multiple times, and that's much more difficult for men in short periods of time. So. But highly. Again, we're talking about me as a person who is sexually. I would say sexually developed neglected. That's not. You know what I'm saying? Like, that I was suffering from that neglect in my own awareness of self and my own sexuality as well as, like, not even knowing how to step into that space. And when I felt like there was such an imbalance of, like, he wants it so much and I'm just supposed to do what he wants. And I have to say this again, my husband's incredible.

Sexual Expectations and Shame in Marriage

Erika Nordfelt [00:59:16] There was never anything that was forceful Like, I never, ever felt like he was demanding of me. But, I mean, it was pretty obvious. Like, he wanted to have sex way more than me. And I wanted to please him because he's not only like, my husband, but my best friend. Like, I care so much about him.

Erika Nordfelt [00:59:34] Yet there was issues with that. And sometimes I didn't want to, or it wasn't even pleasurable at all. And then, you know, years down, you're adding in children, and that makes it even more complicated. So, like, sex outside of where we'll go with masturbation and sexual imagery and all of that sex just between us was a difficult thing. It was a difficult thing to find a groove through and figure out, had to learn how to communicate.

Erika Nordfelt [01:00:00] And I didn't realize how much of that was my lack of. I don't want to say it was completely my fault, but unknowing to myself, there was a huge part of it being my fault. I didn't know how to access my sexual desire, and I didn't know how to meet him there. That was actually threatening to me because, again, that's not okay. I can't want to be sexy or desirable. Even though I felt safe within our partnership. There was one time he bought me this book. I can't remember the title. He probably remembers it behind me, but it was something about, like, finding your naughty girl.

Erika Nordfelt [01:00:39] Or the title was something funny like that. But the intent was to find desire, to kind of enhance that. And I was. I was actually kind of insulted of like, I can't believe you're giving me this book. And I hid it, like, under my underwear drawer in the very bottom. And I was like, I know he wants me to read this, but now I feel like that's not okay. Like, I shouldn't want to want to be those things and that. And then. So sexual shame was definitely starting to show up there for me. Of, like, it's not okay to be sexual. That's a very different type of sexual shame.

Erika Nordfelt [01:01:17] But, like, it wasn't okay. And then I also felt, like, this shame that wasn't necessarily sexually specific, but, like, I'm not good enough for him. So not only is it not okay to be sexual because I'm not sexual, I'm not good enough for my husband because that's what he wants. And it wasn't a body image thing. It wasn't, you know, those types of things that kind of show up with, like, I'm not desirable. It was like, I'm not good at sex. I don't want it. Like, he wants it.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] He wants a naughty girl who wants it all the time.

Erika Nordfelt [01:01:45] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:01:46] And I'm not trying to characterize what he wanted, but I mean.

Erika Nordfelt [01:01:49] Yes. Yeah. And he didn't want that, but he wanted. Going with love languages again. He wanted to express his love, to be that way. He wanted to feel close to me that way. I didn't know and realize that I saw it as, like, overwhelming and threatening as well as like, I don't know how to do that. I can't. I can't figure it out.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:06] Right.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] I think we don't talk enough about the fact that in Mormonism, women are not sexual. There's never a point where anybody ever says to a Mormon girl or young woman, you are a sexual being with your own desires and your own needs. You can have pleasure as a sexual autonomous being. It's gatekeeper.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:28] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:28] Well. And if you look at scriptures, the only sexual females are harlots.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:32] You are somehow getting shunned for being sexual. But yes, it's a gatekeeper. It's.

John Dehlin [01:02:38] Or mommy.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:40] Sucks to be a mommy.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:42] Yes, yeah, yeah. To procreate.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:44] Functional. It's a functional.

Erika Nordfelt [01:02:46] And so in work with couples or even with individual females, when we've discussed situations like this, like, I'm very, very clear and I say your sexuality is for you. It is absolutely for you. And when you choose, you get to share it with your partner. And that can be fabulous. And you actually don't even have to share it with someone. It's still for you to experience the full. Fullness of what sexuality can be. It is not anyone else's.

John Dehlin [01:03:08] I would even say it's rare for a Mormon woman to be confronted about masturbation because Mormon women aren't sexual. So why would you ever.

Erika Nordfelt [01:03:16] Exactly.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:16] Assumption.

John Dehlin [01:03:17] You know? Yeah. Why would you ever inquire about their masturbation habits? Because women aren't Mormon. Women aren't to be.

Erika Nordfelt [01:03:23] As well as. It's maybe harder to figure that out for female. You know, just based on anatomy. It's not as easy and simple as it is for men. To the point that, like from a sexual therapy lens, when there are issues around pleasure or even penetration, masturbation's encouraged for females. So they can figure those things out. It can be really healthy. Of course, we're coming from the psychology lens, but within Mormonism, now you shut that down. That isn't something that is discussed or celebrated, which is such, like, I look at that and I'm like, oh, my gosh, you're getting this so wrong. If you want people to have full and enriched marriages.

Erika Nordfelt [01:04:01] There's so much talk about marriages. You know, gobs and gobs of talks and conversations about beautiful, rich marriages. Help the woman figure out how it's okay. Like, help her embrace her body and her sexuality. Like, how is this not talked about more? And this is, aside from anything critiquing of church doctrine, it's just like, if that is part of the goal, figure out how to teach those skills better for couples because they will be blessed.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:30] That's right. It will help.

Erika Nordfelt [01:04:31] Yes. It's. It's highly useful for healthy. Healthy relationships and definitely healthy sexuality.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:39] Yeah, that's right. But at this point, you don't know that you're on your own.

Erika Nordfelt [01:04:44] Yes. Getting back to my story, you're now

Margi Dehlin [01:04:46] creating narratives or beliefs about yourself based on.

Erika Nordfelt [01:04:50] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:04:51] And you're alone. You're just alone.

Erika Nordfelt [01:04:53] I'm alone. I'm figuring out. Because it's also not comfortable to talk about these things. I maybe, looking back, probably could have talked to some sisters, and I maybe did a little bit. My mom. This just makes me laugh so hard because, again, very, very minimal conversations. Before I got married, we had a conversation about, I would say, hygiene and how to kind of clean up afterwards. That was the conversation I had. There was nothing further around how things were very practical.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:24] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [01:05:25] How to keep yourself smelling clean. And so that's like, all I got from my dear mother. And that's probably more than she ever got. So it's like, I don't hold that. I genuinely laugh at that.

John Dehlin [01:05:37] She was edgy.

Erika Nordfelt [01:05:37] She was edgy. She was progressive. Good job, mom. So, yeah, I'm coming from a lot of this lack of experience and conversations and definitely sex education. There wasn't. There wasn't a good amount of that. And yet. And here we are starting to overlap where Brady has disclosed that he struggles with masturbation and porn.

John Dehlin [01:06:01] So you find that out in your marriage.

Erika Nordfelt [01:06:03] Yeah, it was probably three. I'm trying to think. It was like, I think before we had our son or close to it, and we had him about three years in. I can't remember exactly when. And so that was. Again, I'm putting quotations in disclose. Like, the Mormon Church sets up such a nightmare of exchange around these things for couples. That doesn't have to go that way, but it absolutely checked all of those classic boxes for us in a way that he was not telling me for years because of his own shame. And we're told that it's so horrible and it's this deviant thing. And so he doesn't want to tell me that because he doesn't want to hurt me. And so that becomes its own issue of seeming like it was so deceitful and he isn't being fully honest.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] Yeah. What messages would have you gotten about a Mormon boy that masturbates or looks at erotic images up until that point? Yeah. What would you have?

Erika Nordfelt [01:07:03] Yeah, it's just bad. Just don't do it. Just like they shouldn't do it. It's evil. It's from Satan.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] Like, what about that? It's infidelity.

Erika Nordfelt [01:07:13] I didn't feel that. I don't think I internalized that message, even though I know that's really common. I didn't feel like it was a betrayal against me. For some reason. I didn't feel like him looking at other women was him desiring them over me, which was unique. Like, I know that was pretty unique, but it did feel like a betrayal because of trust.

John Dehlin [01:07:31] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:07:32] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:32] Can I ask you, did you have any. Did you receive any messaging? It can be overt or not, right? About the kind of person who looks at porn and. Well, I think that can be very insidious. What are the descriptors of a person who looks at porn and masturbates in marriage?

Erika Nordfelt [01:07:52] Margi? That's a good question. Here you go. You're making me feel my feels. Because, yes, it was a less than person that didn't exhibit self control or they maybe were more. And again, these were not overt messages, but subtly. Yeah. That they were not as strong in character. They maybe were more deviant or. I don't know if I thought it was perverted, but I know that there's flavors of that that goes around that it is like, so unacceptable. And yeah, you're less person. And like me saying that now absolutely breaks my heart because he was not at all less of a person. And I, to some smaller, large degree, believed that in him for years.

Margi Dehlin [01:08:40] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:08:41] And it's like that was so damaging from this, again, relationship I'm supposed to build because God wants us to be together. And yet I've now been in this up down. Like, you're down there. You're not as good because you're doing these things. Like, it shatters my heart like how I could not have the permission to see him genuinely and more organically and less judgmentally. Like, I can't deny that was on me too, that I was maybe more judgmental than I should be. But I was also somewhat raised in a system to perpetuate that for me,

Margi Dehlin [01:09:22] it was a conditioned self.

Erika Nordfelt [01:09:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:26] It's kind of wild for me to hear that this issue emerged for y' all when you had your first kid around that time. Because I'm. I am. And I'm not bragging I'm a freak in the sense that I never masturbated before marriage.

Erika Nordfelt [01:09:41] Let's turn the turn.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] And I don't know why, because I did a lot of nick mo. You know, I was definitely. I felt sexual, but I just never did just because I was told not to. And for me, it was that simply. You just don't. A lot of nocturnal emissions, but no masturbation until two years into my marriage when we had our first baby.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] And all of a sudden it was off limits. Sex was off limits while Margi was healing. And then I find myself in the shower, and all of a sudden it just happens. And that was the very first time I was in Chicago. I remember the shower. I remember it happening. And that's when all of a sudden, masturbation emerged for me. And then almost immediately, as the Internet.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] The Internet starts emerging and I start learning about co workers that were, like, looking at images at work. And all of a sudden, as the Internet comes, then the option of images is there. And then all of a sudden, that's when it emerged. That's when it emerged for me and for Margi. But I didn't tell her until a long time later.

Erika Nordfelt [01:10:47] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:48] Because I felt so horrible, right?

Erika Nordfelt [01:10:50] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The sexual shame that exists for that partner. And I even hate to say this or that partner, but oftentimes there is one and there is the other that maybe doesn't struggle in the same way. Yeah. It's so fascinating that you say that, because it makes me wonder, even to this day, like, we're navigating our sexual differences and interests in pleasure in sexual scriptures and all of that. Like, we have some things that are compatible and some things that are maybe different. And of course, back then, it was highly different. You know, there wasn't even really options for me to get better or to explore that.

Erika Nordfelt [01:11:24] And so I think Brady probably felt a lot of sexual, and I. He should probably answer this, but it makes me curious if that's like, if our scripts were more compatible, if I was a more sexual person. Not to say that I was taking care of his sexuality, but if it's like, if we vibed better in that way, maybe would have that been an issue for him as much? Maybe it still would have because it started way before he Even met me, as it often does, sometimes there's like, you know, sexual experiences or exposure to content that for a lot of people starts pretty early.

John Dehlin [01:12:00] Curiosity.

Erika Nordfelt [01:12:01] Curiosity, yes. But there's part of me that wonders. It's like, yeah, if we were more sexually connected, would that have been the same thing? Would it have been a harder. Because. Yes. When things happen like babies and whatever you're experiencing that possibly is fulfilling in all the ways that you need and that's taken away. Oh, that's gonna throw a wrench in the game.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:19] I also think what's interesting though is looking at it from maybe just a straight up developmental approach. Right. Where. Who's the psychologist that talks about developmental stages as like Erickson. Yeah. Where you have two things and then you're trying to resolve between. And I know this doesn't necessarily play into that, but this idea though, of an underdeveloped sense of a sexual self. Well, what if part of this also is just filling that out actually trying to get the information not necessarily relational or does that make sense, but an inner need to know oneself. Self.

Erika Nordfelt [01:12:59] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:12:59] To explore oneself in a way, you know, that. That furthers and develops and fills out a sense of self. Does that make sense?

Erika Nordfelt [01:13:08] Yeah. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:13:09] And let alone kind of with navigating partner and having an unmet need.

Erika Nordfelt [01:13:15] Yes, absolutely. And those sexual developments are maybe going to be at varying stages of development. That it's like, how does anyone navigate this at all?

Margi Dehlin [01:13:23] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:13:24] Or how does anyone navigate this so early on, like. And I was 20, he was 22, with very little relationship experience, not to mention sexual experiences. So we were babies in this realm. So good luck. Build a wonderful intimate and sexual marriage and create babies and it'll be beautiful. Right? You'll be great. You'll be great.

John Dehlin [01:13:46] Just for the. Just for the sake of thoroughness, I guess I'm going to. You know, the other thing I'll just disclose about me and Margi is that we, in terms of frequency, we've been relatively compatible, I would say from the very beginning. Frequency and consistency. I would say there's not a standard deviation difference between us in terms of our desired template, as far as I'm aware. And so that now for you all,

Margi Dehlin [01:14:11] I love it for you all to just know about us.

Erika Nordfelt [01:14:14] Full vulnerability here.

John Dehlin [01:14:16] So there's never been a point where I've felt like that there's a big difference there.

Erika Nordfelt [01:14:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:21] What it was was when, when I, when I was desiring, you know, when I was having desires on the road or, or, you know, Whatever. Then I needed just something that would kind of arouse me so that I could have that release. Because I did want a regular release. And if a regular release wasn't necessarily available with Margi, there were times where I just felt like I wanted it. And images come in just as a way to elicit that release. Honestly, it's not cause I'm desiring like you said, it's not cause I'm desiring something else or wanting something else per se. It's just like what's gonna get me there.

John Dehlin [01:15:01] And it's gonna be an image. And then over time, I think it's just a variety of images. One image might lose its effect. And so you become exploratory at that point because you're looking for something else that's going to get you there. I know we're probably being graphic, but yeah, let's do it, you know.

Erika Nordfelt [01:15:18] Yeah, yeah. And I think that's really common when we can normalize that as just like part of like your sexual experiences and behaviors and, and agreements within your relationship. Whether or not that maybe plays into this specific example, it's like, okay, so explain to me where the issue is. You know, it's maybe not interfering with relationships or work or emotions because that's where. And we'll probably get into this. That's where the real big issue is the level of distress that shows up around. There's a miss in the behavior and my supposed values, whether actually their values are the ones they think are given to them.

Erika Nordfelt [01:15:57] Like that's where the emotional distress and you know, destruction can kind of happen. But you know, if you're looking at it in that way and you're just recognizing we demonize so much the behavior of like, well John, you can't do that unless you're with your wife. Like, yeah, you want urges, so just suck it up. Like you want those releases. You just, you can't do that. That's not okay, that's not acceptable. Versus like, well, I don't know, like sometimes I have tension in my back and I take it back and that helps me feel better. And there's a release there that feels really nice. That's self soothing.

Erika Nordfelt [01:16:27] Masturbation can kind of be self soothing as well as there's even new research. I can't remember where I learned this. I'm pretty sure it was on one of Natasha's fantastic podcast or something from her that there was a research study that was conducted to really assess how much does. Does viewing, we will say of sexual imagery or Content interfere with relationships. And so they had partners that were viewing and they're assessing them with. With whatever meter or questionnaire that they create. And one of the questions was like, how much does this make you want to be with your partner or not with your partner? And the majority of the answer is like, yeah, not only am I aroused, but I'm aroused and I wanna be with them or I wanna do these things with them.

Erika Nordfelt [01:17:09] Like that it could be more encouraging of partnered sex than people think. But of course, you know, this is coming through the psychology lens is not what you. That you get in Mormonism. Because, John, that was not okay. You can't do any of those things. And not only is it not okay, you should feel heaping amounts of shame.

Margi Dehlin [01:17:27] It's evil.

John Dehlin [01:17:28] It's sin. Next to murder.

Erika Nordfelt [01:17:29] It's sinful. Yes, in Mormonism, it's sinful. You are sinful and deviant as well as weak because Satan got to you. Like, oh, so many damaging, shameful messages.

John Dehlin [01:17:38] Yeah, yeah.

Brady Coming Out and Processing the Disclosure

Margi Dehlin [01:17:40] So to go back to your story. So we're back and you have just found out, right? Brady has just told you and you feel. How are you feeling in your life?

John Dehlin [01:17:50] Is it a matter of Cat?

Erika Nordfelt [01:17:52] He came to me, which is a beautiful thing and also indicative of him. Like, he's. He's amazing. And I think he could tell, like, unbeknownst to me, I'm sure there was a lot of distress of him wrestling with this and not only not telling me, but we tell each other everything. We are each other's person. So he couldn't rely on me. He couldn't express things to me. Like, he was alone in this darkness. All by.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:16] Both were kind of alone.

Erika Nordfelt [01:18:17] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:17] Both in your. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:18:19] And that also, I think is common that people have to suffer in silence because for the male, there's a lot of shame. You can't. Again, I'm going with classic gender roles. It's not always a male, female thing, but for the sake of description, it is this dark, lonely thing you can't share with other people because you should be ashamed of it. And also you shouldn't be doing it. And for the partner or the wife in our situation, not only can I not talk to somebody because there may be some shame that it's happening, I don't want anyone to think bad about my partner, so I'm not gonna talk to them as a way to protect my partner too. So we suffer in silence.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:56] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:18:56] And we maybe even don't even talk openly to each other because we don't wanna harm each other even more. Like, I tell my partner, you know, if I'm Brady, I'm telling Erica, and that makes her so sad. And that breaks my heart. And Brady tells me, and I'm actually brokenhearted. But I don't wanna show him that I'm brokenhearted. I want. Because I know that breaks his heart, and that's not what he's trying to do. Again, we were far more attuned, I think, to be able to know those things in each other. And I worked through a lot of those, I would say, initial feelings of betrayal.

Erika Nordfelt [01:19:26] And I didn't always feel like he was betraying me. Initially, yes, probably. And it was more because of the honesty than it was because of the behavior. So first time he told me, I was crushed. But for whatever reason, I felt like, okay, we can handle this. Like, it was sad. And I honestly don't specifically remember the conversation itself other than, like, that was hard to hear. You know, it kind of shifts your whole perspective of your relationship and of where we're gonna go forward.

Erika Nordfelt [01:19:58] But he told me, and we're good. That means it's done. This can happen a lot with couples. And it's like, okay, we told me. I'm so glad now we're fully honest and we don't have to worry about these things.

John Dehlin [01:20:08] And he won't do it again.

Erika Nordfelt [01:20:09] And he won't do it again. So the second time he told me actually was a hundred times harder for me because it's like, no, no, this actually isn't just a blip in our story that, like, this is much bigger than that. And again, I did not have the education and understanding that I now have. I remember driving in my car, crying so uncontrollably that I actually had to pull over. I wasn't even safe driving my car because I just felt this overwhelming despair. And it's doubly painful because I almost had no way to not feel that despair. You know, that's all the messages that I was given that I had. I was supposed to feel like, this is. This is. This could possibly break us and ruin us forever.

Margi Dehlin [01:21:02] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:21:03] At the same time. Ish. Again, I'm not really clear on timelines, but I know it overlapped. I was starting my graduate program, and I didn't actually. For my graduate program, John, I'd be interested to see if you got better training than me. We did not talk a lot about sexual health concepts. I didn't have any classes around that, even though we had couples. Like, I had training around couples and family therapy, but I had zero around sexuality. Whether it was sexuality or like LGBTQ queer training, I needed a whole lot more of that, you know.

John Dehlin [01:21:33] Yeah. I have a six year psychology, clinical counseling psychology, PhD. Not only was sexual health never discussed in those six years, really certainly not in any of the coursework or curriculum, but even marital relationships was not covered. There was and that's clinical counseling psychology. So I think marriage and family therapy.

Erika Nordfelt [01:21:56] Well, mine wasn't marriage and family therapy, even though I had some kind of family therapy ish classes. Mine was actually, it was a BA in counseling and I even did my internship actually in school counseling. So I had a little bit less, I had less clinical experience. Ironically, that's all I've ever done since I graduated was basically in clinical work. But.

John Dehlin [01:22:17] But in a six year PhD, I never had a relationship class. Not once. Isn't that weird?

Erika Nordfelt [01:22:21] Yeah, so weird.

John Dehlin [01:22:22] Let alone sexuality.

Erika Nordfelt [01:22:23] And mine was like I don't know, 15 years ago. Hopefully programs are better, but I was lacking in that. But what I did learn was good things about communication, relationship dynamics. Like I was learning these other skills that were helping me as well as I think us navigate as we continue to deal with this. Because I was able to accept, okay, this isn't just going away and recognizing how if I'm spiraling every time, no wonder he doesn't want to tell me anymore. Like I need to show up for him. Because I'm learning what it looks like to really show up for people and what real true empathetic like support is.

Erika Nordfelt [01:23:02] Yeah, as a therapist of course I'm learning this, but I can see how it's relevant to my relationship. So I think those things were helpful in ways that I didn't internalize. Okay, I'm just not sexy enough. I'm not. I need to just give him more sex. I didn't actually slide into those thoughts. There may be a little bit was that early on. But really I was able to differentiate of like, this is your problem and I want to support you, but I'm not going to fix it for you or figure it out for you. I will with you. But. And going back to what I said before of like, I don't like to nag or enable.

Erika Nordfelt [01:23:38] I think maybe that was part of why I definitely differentiated sometimes in a unique way. Because with couples often doesn't happen. There can be even a clinging of like, okay, I have to be everything for you or now I'm your warden and you have to tell me every single time and tell me everything. And that's, again, that one up, one down. So horrible.

John Dehlin [01:23:58] That's deadly to a marriage.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:59] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:24:00] And there maybe was still that, but not. I didn't ever feel like I was a warden. But there was some times where we're like, okay, tell me every time. That was, like, our agreement with each other. I think at a certain point. And again, my memory. I'd love to hear what Brady says. I think at a certain point, we abandoned that. Of, like, you can talk to me about it, but I don't feel like you need to tell me every single time. Like, you have to figure this out. Whether that was right or wrong. That was kind of what was going on for us over the years.

John Dehlin [01:24:28] I love it that you didn't take the responsibility of, like, well, then I gotta supply it more or I'm broken or I'm defective or my body's not attractive, or, I don't know. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, like, I have to do crazy positions or whatever because he's seeing that in the porn. And now I gotta perform so that I can compete with the porn women. Yeah, it sounds like you didn't.

Erika Nordfelt [01:24:52] I didn't. And I wonder. I think there might be a couple things involved. Like the one of, like, I'm not responsible for you. You know, that's somewhat. Something innate in me that probably was overlapping with this that I still don't quite know where that came from. So there's like, a little bit of stubbornness of, like, don't make me do this for you, as well as my own sexual shame of, like, I don't think I can. There's no way I can be that. I'm already struggling enough with the sexual relationship we have. Like, for me to be more sexually available for you. That will crush me because I'm already struggling.

Erika Nordfelt [01:25:22] I think that wasn't maybe conscious, but subconsciously there was probably a resistance of, like, there's no way I can. As well as maybe a knowing that I shouldn't. I don't know. So, yeah, luckily. But yet with couples, that shows up a lot that the woman will assume this caretaker role or warden role or, you know, some type of archetype that is helping them figure themselves out. Far more enmeshed, far more involved than really is good for them.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] Julia, who's taking notes, is also just noting and observing what I think I agree with, which is seems like y' all have more secure attachment than probably the average couple or Mormon couple, and a less of a tendency towards negative codependency. Which makes you rare, unfortunately. But still unfortunately.

Erika Nordfelt [01:26:16] Unfortunately.

John Dehlin [01:26:16] Fortunately for you. Unfortunately for the larger demographics.

Erika Nordfelt [01:26:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:21] Majority of our audience.

Margi Dehlin [01:26:21] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:26:22] It's funny. We've taken attachment tests. We're both secure attachment. And we're not perfect in that. I think we still have our own insecurities and stuff like that. And I love my mother, but there was codependency there that, whether I knew it or not, I feel like I was averting from. Maybe that's part of the. I'm not going to be responsible for you. That, I think was part of me not falling into that role of, like, yeah, I'm gonna keep you comfortable.

Responsibility, Conditioning, and Partner Needs

Margi Dehlin [01:26:49] I was gonna ask a question around, you know, whether you received messaging or conditioning that you were responsible for being fulfilling Brady's sexual needs as a person. Because what I'm hearing is that you chose to. Not to differentiate from that and not go that route. But did you receive that? Cause I'm curious about that piece.

Erika Nordfelt [01:27:17] I don't know if I received that for the specific, like, sexual. You know, like, I don't know if I. Well, I probably received it, but I did not internalize. Like, if I am more sexually available, he won't look at porn and masturbate. But just between us, I think I felt that. So just between our. Like, I was able to. Again, this is unique. I was able to differentiate our experience and his experience with sexual imagery and masturbation from our sexual relationship. So within our sexual relationship, I do feel like. I felt like that I need to be enough for him. I need to be whatever that is.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:55] But you didn't feel responsible for him?

Erika Nordfelt [01:27:58] I. Oof. Gosh. I think sometimes I felt responsible to be enough for him sexually because he wanted a really good sexual relationship. And it maybe wasn't perfect. Maybe sometimes it slipped into this other piece, but I did not feel like it was my job to figure that out for him or to provide it as the solution. Yeah, I didn't. But in a different way, I did. Just between us, like, I need to be this enough for you so that you're satisfied with our sexual relationship with. Or whatever.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:36] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:28:37] But those were separated, which, again, I think that was unique and a benefit for us. I'm really glad. I think that decreased a lot of our suffering, even though there was a hell of a. Hell of a lot of suffering anyway. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:51] So this is the part of the story where marriages start to potentially go south and real. Real damage gets done. And it sounds like because of the secure attachment, the tendency not towards codependency and just some basic mental health dispositions for both of you that y' all didn't slide in to the toxic, disastrous implosion that many Mormon and I'd say highly religious couples these days probably have.

Erika Nordfelt [01:29:17] Yeah. Part of that was also the 12 step group, like, if I'm being fully honest.

John Dehlin [01:29:23] So talk about that.

Erika Nordfelt [01:29:23] Yes. Okay. So Passage. I'm not sure if that's still what it. When you're talking about Googling, you know, like sex. What is it? Sex addiction recovery groups or something they call it, at least back then. This is when we were in Colorado. Lived in Colorado, and then we moved to Idaho. We were in Colorado for grad school and several things for, like, eight years.

Erika Nordfelt [01:29:43] So it was called the pornography addiction support group, Passage. And these are groups that the church had and probably still has in myriad of places to allow support genuinely. And so it was support usually for the addicted. Again, I'm using big quotations for those that are listening, because I don't ascribe to that term anymore. But back then it was for the addicted partner. And they also had groups that were more substance use oriented or any type of general addiction. Those were ARP groups, so addiction recovery groups. So they had specific pornography groups and then also just addiction recovery group groups.

Erika Nordfelt [01:30:21] And the cool thing is, and it's interesting, I've got a lot of commentary on this. Initially, it was so good for us, as is most groups. When you sit in a group of humans who get you on a deep level around something oriented in pain, there's healing there.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:35] And when there's shame.

Erika Nordfelt [01:30:36] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:37] And the shame is brought to light.

Erika Nordfelt [01:30:39] Yes. Shame decreases when we share our stories and experience empathy. So they had groups for the men. Again, this class classically goes with the stereotype, but the men had their group because they were the addicted. And then there was a woman's group for their partners. The cool thing, what they had in Colorado, they also had missionaries called to watch our children so that we could go to these groups. And we didn't have to figure out taking turns, because sometimes couples would be like, okay, you go one week and I have to go the other week, because someone's got to watch our kids. So in some areas we were at, they had missionaries called, and it was actually very beautiful.

Erika Nordfelt [01:31:14] It was like a little nursery. And our kids would go and they do little crafts, and we got to go have these really powerful, you know, experiences with our groups so that we didn't feel as alone, so that we felt supported, so that we felt understood. And that was Meaningful for us. Was it a solution?

Margi Dehlin [01:31:31] No.

Erika Nordfelt [01:31:31] Did it perpetuate other harmful things? Yes. We didn't know any of that then. But as just, you know, a simple support group that again, that we see repeated in all sorts of therapy settings, it was very healing for us. We felt like, okay, we can get through this. There was hope.

Exploring Conversion Therapy and Behavioral Change

John Dehlin [01:31:50] Fascinating. For my dissertation, I studied conversion therapy with LGBTQ Mormons. And even though the vast majority of LGBTQ Mormons who went through conversion therapy reported it as being harmful. Harmful, they also reported it as being helpful. Because if you're just in a support group or talking to a therapist or having a place to express yourself, even if they've got a harmful modality that they're, you know, imposing upon you, you're still, you got someone to talk to. You feel like someone's invested in your well being. Maybe you have other people to talk to. So it sounds like you're saying this program, you said Odyssey, what'd you say? It's passage, passage, passage, passage. Or I call it the Mormon Addiction, the Mormon aa.

Erika Nordfelt [01:32:40] It's basically a four step group, just

John Dehlin [01:32:42] like aa, you're saying it was actually beautiful and helpful in many ways at

Erika Nordfelt [01:32:47] that point in our life. It really was. And we became pretty good friends with several people in the group. We had a pretty supportive bishop too. That I think was just a nice, safe place for us to be able to discuss things again. None of that actually created an actual sobriety solution.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:03] That's right. I think that's important though.

Erika Nordfelt [01:33:05] But yes, it allowed us hope, it allowed to normalize what was going on instead of we were, you know, these outliers that nobody could really save.

John Dehlin [01:33:15] Do you want to speak to just what the structure was? What was the mechanism for change? What were the goals and the mechanism change?

Erika Nordfelt [01:33:21] So it genuinely was a 12 step group. So 12 step, just to give people a little bit history of the 12 STEP program in general was started by, is it Bob Smith? This started for Alcohol, Alcoholics, Alcoholic Anonymous.

Erika Nordfelt [01:33:36] But it's a structure that still exists. And actually I have a sister that it's like her new religion. It saved her life. It was very, very beneficial. But there's certain steps that you have to kind of go through where you are exploring, you know, your addiction, where you're at certain points maybe apologizing for wrongs that you've to made other people. I can't remember all the 12 steps. There's 12 of them. I knew at one point. So the church took the 12 step, I would say curriculum that also even outside of religion still has an element of relying on a higher power, of kind of giving over your power to the.

Erika Nordfelt [01:34:11] To God or to whatever it is you see as a higher power. So of course, it's very compatible with religion. So the church takes that, and then they're editing all sorts of things and entering, you know, they're. They're somewhat like injecting doctrine into all of these aspects of the 12 step. So every week was one of the 12 steps. We had a handbook, and I believe.

Erika Nordfelt [01:34:33] Oh, this is taking me back. I want to say initially it was just the passage book. And the women's group, I think, still read what the men read, but they were in the midst of creating a whole new 12 step just for the women. I think I want to say it was like pretty baby, when we kind of stopped going, that there was like new version, initial versions of that female 12 step issue.

John Dehlin [01:34:56] And was there ever, in your experience, the woman that was the one that was sick?

Erika Nordfelt [01:35:01] Not in my church's group, not in my groups, but when that happened, they usually went to the general addictions recovery group because it would feel really weird to go into a whole room full of men. So in the general, you know, people that were maybe alcoholics or had other type of substance abuse like that one was a bit more diverse. So I think some women, if they did have that, however, my. My bigger guess is they just didn't go because there wasn't a space for them and their sexual shame. Probably. I don't. Can't say it's worse, but it was a different flavor because here I'm struggling with something only men struggle with, and I'm not supposed to be sexual anyways, and I can't, you know, figure a way through it. So like. Like a female experience of that is. Yeah, a different flavor of shame, I would say for sure.

John Dehlin [01:35:49] So generally, the men were the addicts struggling with sobriety and trying to stay on the wagon. And the women, the wives, were the help meets.

Erika Nordfelt [01:35:58] Yes, help meets. Oh, man. I remember specific meetings where we discussed the word help meet and all the beautiful meaning in that. And again, at the time, it rung, rung. True, it was. It was helpful to us. But we would go through these 12 steps and, you know, they had quotes and scriptures and maybe things to do, and then it was like, go around the circle and you could either, you know, express whatever thoughts you had about that, or you could pass. You know, we see that on TV all the time that with aa, it's like, hi, my name is. I'm an alcoholic.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] And what would they say with high.

Erika Nordfelt [01:36:35] They didn't have an intro like that. Not that I remember. And we were familiar enough with each other. Other that it's like you didn't have to really.

John Dehlin [01:36:40] Did you count days or weeks or months or did they count?

Margi Dehlin [01:36:44] No.

John Dehlin [01:36:44] Okay.

Erika Nordfelt [01:36:45] No. As far as. Like I've been sober for five years.

John Dehlin [01:36:47] Yeah. Like the token of number of years. What's that?

Erika Nordfelt [01:36:50] Sober wasn't a thing.

Margi Dehlin [01:36:51] Because it didn't have a solution. It's back to the solution.

Erika Nordfelt [01:36:54] Yes. And it's back to the zero tolerance thing. And again, that's another element to this that we can draw in that if, if people are being really honest, that approach didn't actually work. There was this fallacy of you have this beautiful 12 step program and if you rely on Christ enough, he will take this from you. He didn't. Because it wasn't that simple. It was far more complex than that. And it also wasn't an addiction in that way. And so.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] Yeah. Cause sex is like water, air.

Erika Nordfelt [01:37:22] It's like nature.

Margi Dehlin [01:37:23] It's like nature.

Erika Nordfelt [01:37:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:25] You don't cure yourself of the need for water or sleep or food. And sex is right there, right?

Erika Nordfelt [01:37:32] Yes. And you can't take sexuality away from. From the human. Now some could argue you can take the behavior away, but even still, clinically, it's like aiming at zero did not turn into zero. If anything, it perpetuated that behavior to repeat over and over again. Just as much as if I'm gonna go off carbs for the rest of my life, because that's what I'm told, I'm probably gonna binge bread in the cupboard, you know, And I may be. And I'm gonna also have a scarcity effect that it's like now that I ate that and nobody knows, I'm gonna really eat as much as I can. And afterwards I'm gonna feel worthless because that was a sin. Cause carbs are of the devil.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:09] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:38:10] And so. And then I feel miserable.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:12] Like diet culture totally. Diets fail.

Erika Nordfelt [01:38:15] And the funny thing is we do always need food, you know. And so it's like, it's a good parallel to recognize that the way that it's approached that way. And you're always aiming at zero meaning zero meaning zero behavior. Like that's the goal, to never ever do it. It perpetuates it, even being more difficult, I've found.

Erika Nordfelt [01:38:34] Not that it turns into zero, but a decrease in behavior is far more likely when you accept that it's happening. If Anything. Try to do it, you know, instead of, you can never have carbs for the rest of your life. I want you to eat carbs, a whole loaf of bread, every single day. You're actually probably not going to. You're gonna get sick of bread or you're at least gonna wanna figure out a different frequency that feels better for you. If we're taking away the shame, if we're taking away the lack of permission and aiming at zero, you can have far more ability to find intention on how you want this to show up in your life.

Erika Nordfelt [01:39:06] But that's impossible. When it is demonized. There's no value in it. There's no. There's no place for it in a value system that religion tells you what that looks like.

Margi Dehlin [01:39:15] Okay, so right now you're having, like in your timeline, in your story, so you're having this experience, it sounds like, of going regularly to these meetings. And how long do you do that? And is. Did you have the experience of noticing that it wasn't working? Like, what. What actually happened to make you move away from that?

Erika Nordfelt [01:39:36] So it's interesting. Colorado was a wonderful place. It was a good place for us religiously. Again, this is kind of going back to my experience of growing up in Durango. Very close to our wards. Really what made us stop going wasn't as much anymore that we still wanted it. We moved to Rexburg. The program in Colorado was so much different than it was in Rexburg. They still had it, but it wasn't as well attended, which was so bizarre to me. I was like, I know there's more Mormons here. Like, why are these groups not overflowing? Why are they not everywhere? Because they weren't. It was far more sparse.

Erika Nordfelt [01:40:11] And at a certain point, I actually was like, okay, we need to get someone to babysit our kids. Like, I'd had this great experience, experience of support. I'd even reached out, I think, to an area authority or a state, someone that was over kind of the organization, some. Whoever's calling it was. And I was like, we need this. Like, this will help increase attendance. This will help decrease suffering. This is something that could bless the Saints. This is something that bring people closer to Christ. Like, I was like, if you can help us take care of our kids, we can benefit from this program that the church is offering us. I was shot down, Shot down over and over again.

John Dehlin [01:40:49] That's so strange.

Erika Nordfelt [01:40:50] They had zero interest in doing that for us. And that. I don't know if that is the concentrated Rexburg culture or just Rexburg culture because outside of religion, it also has small time, you know, small town vibes that are kind of different and peculiar. And, you know, whoever I was talking maybe just didn't want to listen to me and my ideas as this, you know, outsider. I have no idea.

John Dehlin [01:41:11] I mean, I would just wonder whether the sexual shame in Rexburg was so intense that people felt too shamed to even show up. Because I would not believe that porn and masturbation frequency would be lower in Rexburg than in Durango, especially because there's a university there.

Erika Nordfelt [01:41:29] There's a whole lot of people that aren't having sex. Not that sex decreases it, but for some people, it maybe adds different elements on how they navigate it. I did hear that the program or like, those groups were more prevalent on campus. And my husband did go to some of those.

Erika Nordfelt [01:41:45] They were, I would say, more. Well, yeah, well attended. But the community at large, I want to say there was like, maybe two, and I could be off in my memory with that. Campus had way more, but the community didn't. And we were part of the community now. Like, we had been students. We had left, we came back, and now we're part of the community. And I was still wanting that. Like, I needed that peace, but because I. Not only did I feel like it was harder because I couldn't get childcare, I probably could have figured that out. I was like, you guys don't care about this.

Erika Nordfelt [01:42:15] Like, I felt unsupported by the program at large. And I. I was not as drawn into. Like, that's not. It's no longer serving the benefit anymore. There's a different energy to it.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:25] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [01:42:26] So we did attend for a while, but at a certain point, it fizzled.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:42:30] It just wasn't as good as Durango, which is weird.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:32] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:33] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:34] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:42:34] We were actually in Fort Collins at that point. So Durango was very still. But, yes, Colorado. Yeah. Special people back there.

Moving to Rexburg and BYU-Idaho Culture

John Dehlin [01:42:42] So how does your Mormon story progress moving to Rexburg?

Erika Nordfelt [01:42:45] So up and. So a little bit back in Colorado, we both got our graduate degrees, so there were some intense and rough times. And really, this is indicative of at least my spiritual journey. There was one point where I was in grad school. Brady was in grad school. I was young woman president. He was ward clerk. We had one kid, and I was pregnant with the next. And so it was, like, intense. And I think he was also in his internship, which was student teaching at the time he got his master's in English. So not only was. I think he's still Taking classes, but he was basically in the school. I can't remember if it was exactly that time. He probably is knowing right now, but really intense, like very stressful. And so much of it is because we were serving diligently in the church, like young women's president. I was 20 something.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:37] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:43:37] You know, I was still a baby and I was in charge of all these young women. That calling is exhausting. It is so busy, I think. I mean, and I have been Relief Society president, but not in a family ward. It was in a student ward. But I think young women president's busier. There's different looks for Relief Society presidents, but young women president, there's just so much you have to go to and plan.

Margi Dehlin [01:43:58] So expectations don't you think are so. I find them to be higher.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] The Mormon Church cares more about its youth than it does its adults. So it's gonna have higher expectations, bigger stakes.

Erika Nordfelt [01:44:09] You're gonna ruin them or make them. So you better plan everything. And I was young and naive and also still very much in this, like, I'm gonna be the best Mormon ever. You're gonna be the best president ever. And I'm pregnant and so sick and so tired and in grad school and my husband, like, we're trying to balance all of this. It was, it was exhaustive. So much and in some ways I think a little damaging. At one point he had gotten a different calling.

Erika Nordfelt [01:44:38] I'm trying to remember the timeline, but again, similar things. He was working full time. He was in grad school. Like we were so busy and because of his work schedule, he worked retail and he couldn't make it to. He was called into young Men's and he couldn't make it to all of the activities because he had to, he would, he would get either Saturday or Sunday off. He couldn't get both. So he get Sunday off and another day in the week, which usually seemed to like end up on mutual night. So he couldn't go. And there was a bishopric member that really shamed him. He like had this whole.

Erika Nordfelt [01:45:11] I can't remember if it was in sacrament meeting or some adult meeting that this talk on. Like, you just always say yes and you always show up and you make it work. And it was so pointed at, like, oh my gosh, we are trying so hard and here we are getting shamed that it's not enough.

Erika Nordfelt [01:45:30] And so luckily he had talked to some other like, leadership person and they were like, this is ridiculous. You don't need to have this calling. And they, they, you know, they Released him. But there was still, you know, some unfortunate experiences in that of these expectations that were just unnecessary. Absolutely unnecessary. God will love us anyways. We do not have to prove it consistently and at the abuse of our own selves. And yet we felt like we kind of had to do that. But so we were both in grad school. We both roughly graduated ish at the same time. And then Brady was looking for different jobs.

Erika Nordfelt [01:46:08] He knew he didn't want to stay in retail, and so he got his job at byu Idaho, actually, in the admissions department, which, again, was like, super exciting thing for us. We had been renting for so long and in school and, you know, hadn't had an official job. Hadn't had. We'd been on Medicaid this whole time, like benefits and a salary and they're gonna pay for. For us to move. Like, it was like, this is dreamy thing. So we moved. Really excited.

Erika Nordfelt [01:46:39] I was just getting ready to start seeing clients to start to work towards in Colorado. They had different levels of licensing, so I was getting ready to start seeing clients so I could get my clinical license in Colorado. And then we moved.

Erika Nordfelt [01:46:53] And so, like, I had graduated, but there was kind of this stop point in my professional work at that point because we had moved and relocated. And we're kind of setting up shop in Rexburg. And so that was a new settling into life. We.

John Dehlin [01:47:09] What year did you move to Rexburg?

Erika Nordfelt [01:47:11] Oh, what year did we move to Rexburg? I don't know. Is he saying 2000 something? 2011. Okay, that tracks.

Margi Dehlin [01:47:21] Because.

Erika Nordfelt [01:47:21] Yes, because our third daughter, she turned a year when we had got there. And of kind. No. Yeah. Okay. Yes, 2011. He is correct.

John Dehlin [01:47:30] I'm just trying to get my timeline to match yours.

Erika Nordfelt [01:47:34] So he was working on campus, enjoyed it. There was a lot of positive experiences. There was also a lot of other experiences. That's his story that he could tell some other time. But for the most part, initially, we were really excited. We bought a house. I didn't know if I'd ever buy a house. That was massive for me. And yet, ironically, all of these wonderful things were happening. We had a job, we had a house, we had a yard. I remember, like, looking out our back window and being like, our kids can play. I don't have to go to the park anymore. I would go to the park, like, every day, sometimes multiple times a day, because I just needed to be outside with my kids and I could just watch them play in this grass and the trees.

Erika Nordfelt [01:48:09] It was so lovely. And ironically, that first probably Four to six months. I was kind of depressed and I didn't know why. I was really confused by that, but. But I think for me it was settling into the Rexburg culture. Some of that is intermixed with religion. Some of that maybe isn't. But I felt like I don't know if I fit in with these people.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] Can I ask?

Erika Nordfelt [01:48:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:48:37] Is there a difference between Rexburg town family culture and BYU Idaho culture?

Erika Nordfelt [01:48:44] Yeah, because we were both students at BYU Idaho. We were even married students at BYU Idaho. And there was a lot of fun energy to being in, like a married student ward. Everyone's kind of the same. We're all going through the same things. Like, I enjoyed that a lot. There's a lot, I would say, more camaraderie on campus. When you're outside of campus and you're in the family like zone, there is an interesting element. And again, I think this probably shows up in other small communities. But like, people don't rely on their reward as much for that family piece because they a lot of times have family there.

John Dehlin [01:49:18] Oh, yeah. All the locals have.

Erika Nordfelt [01:49:21] Even in our. Brady's parents still lived in Rexburg, so he was there a couple years later. His sister moved there, like.

John Dehlin [01:49:26] So the rewards aren't as strong.

Erika Nordfelt [01:49:28] Well, they're not, I would say. I guess it depends on how you define strong.

John Dehlin [01:49:32] They are not close, social.

Erika Nordfelt [01:49:34] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:49:34] They're not as socially.

Erika Nordfelt [01:49:36] They're not as social. They are not as close. They're not as intimate.

John Dehlin [01:49:38] Because everybody, every Sunday you're with your extended family for dinner.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:42] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:49:43] Or you'll go to your ward. But you're not putting intention into developing those relationships. Like in Colorado, we were in probably four different wards. Even though we didn't move a lot for some reason, every ward we were in, like, split. So we were in a lot of different wards. And over and over I was like realizing, okay, here's the ward. At least the people that were regularly attending within the year, I would have a conversation with almost all of them. We would know each other on a first name basis. There would be a relationship developing. So I go to Rexburg and expect that. I mean, and there are people, I've still lived next to them or near them for probably 12 years and never had a conversation with them.

Erika Nordfelt [01:50:18] And for a huge chunk, I was probably in their ward. So it just was not really the same feel. And other people might have different experiences. That was absolutely mine.

John Dehlin [01:50:29] I would say. That was not our North Logan experience. Right, Margi?

Erika Nordfelt [01:50:34] That it was more.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:36] I kind of feel I can see a little North Logan in that.

Erika Nordfelt [01:50:39] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:39] But I think you have a. You definitely have an amplified version.

Erika Nordfelt [01:50:43] And that could also be maybe our wards we were in. We lived a little bit out of town, a bit more rural. There's a lot of, like, ranchers, a lot of kind of more agricultural, whether it was families or communities. And that might somehow have its own influence on the ward energy. However, one of our wards, we lived next to, like, we were just. We were and still are on just kind of a tiny street that has like 10 houses, but we backed up to a big subdivision. And in that subdivision, there was a lot of people that worked on campus, a lot of professors. And still with that ward, though, I just did not feel the close camaraderie that I felt with my Colorado wards.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:20] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:51:21] So not only am I not feeling like I have a ward family, also I just didn't feel like I fit in. I felt very different. I don't think I looked much different. You know, I was the classic young mom with kids staying home. I fit all of the stereotypes of my age demographic, but I felt so different. I feel like I saw people that maybe were visibly different. They'd like, you know, be smoking or have a tattoo, and I'd be like, I want to talk to them. I want to be their friend. Like, I want. I was almost felt this urge to diversify my experience just for the sake of diversifying and also proving of like, I'm not. I love all people. I don't want to be narrow minded. I think there was some of that of, like, there's the us and them.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:06] Everyone.

Erika Nordfelt [01:52:07] Everyone is Mormon there, whether they're active and attending. And I think now that we're out of the church, I'm seeing that. No, not. Not everyone may be people can assume that we're active in attending right now and we're not.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:19] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [01:52:20] But like, majority of my kids, you know, my son right now is getting ready and he talks about it a lot, and he has his own really cool and unique story. But most of his friends are going to be leaving on missions. He's a senior, and it's like so starkly obvious to him that that's what's gonna happen with the majority of his friend group. Whereas Colorado. Cool. Someone's going on a mission. What is that again? You know, that's just such a different thing. So I was feeling pretty low, and I think I was able to kind of rally through that. And I don't even know specifically what helped me.

Erika Nordfelt [01:52:55] I was acclimating I guess, to kind of the culture, to kind of the people trying to find relationships, because there's still wonderful people there. And so it's like I'm throwing a broad blanket over Rexburg, which isn't fair. There's a lot of wonderful, genuine, even nuanced, even progressive even. You know, there's a myriad of people, but there is, there is a majority feel to a certain way of acting and living and seeing things.

John Dehlin [01:53:22] So when did the tension start developing in your kind of Mormon journey as a family?

Erika Nordfelt [01:53:27] That is a good question. So 2011, we moved there. 2013, I actually started to work on campus. So I was to a point where we'd settled in enough, I was like, okay, I want to definitely get my license. Which the licensing regulations were different in Idaho than they were Colorado. They're actually easier, which is very typical of Idaho.

Erika Nordfelt [01:53:49] Idaho doesn't regulate as much, which sometimes is an advantage and sometimes a disadvantage. But I knew that I had to start curing more clinical hours and get supervision. And my mother in law at the time, who's also been very supportive of me working, which is wonderful. I think me working or even getting a graduate degree, like in these younger years of my life is the norm. And there can be thoughts and opinions. I never got those judgmental messages from actually any of the women in my life, including Brady's mom. She was pretty encouraging, if anything, for a while she helped babysit my kids so that I could work when I was working.

Erika Nordfelt [01:54:28] So she had worked on campus for a long time, had a lot of connections. Everyone knows Dixie, she's great. So she had connected me with the department head at BYU Idaho. And I thought I was just going in to discuss, okay, you know, I need these internship hours. Do you have any ideas? I was hoping maybe it could be a networking opportunity for him to like hook me up with someplace to be. I had explored someone else as a supervisor and it wasn't at all a good fit. And that kind of totally fell on its face. And so I lost my steam for a while.

Erika Nordfelt [01:54:57] But after I met with this department head, by the end of it, he was like, awesome, we would love you to come see some students and we'll pay you. They paid me like $10 an hour to start up with, which at the time I was like, $10 an hour? That's amazing. I felt, because usually with internships you don't always get paid. I thought that was glorious. But now it's looking back, it's like, oh, my gosh, they got so much so Much value for me that did not turn into dollars even years after I'd been there.

Counseling Internship and Early Therapy Work

John Dehlin [01:55:26] So you did an internship at byu?

Erika Nordfelt [01:55:27] Idaho?

John Dehlin [01:55:27] Well, yes, in the student center, though.

Erika Nordfelt [01:55:29] But yeah, in the counseling center. I was, I guess the state would consider me an internal. But they, at least on campus, they don't always. I mean, this is a little bit different when you're working than in the private sector and you're dealing with insurance and stuff. They had people that maybe didn't have clinical license, maybe they had PhDs. They had a myriad of, I would say, clinical professionals. And so they just kind of treated me as someone else. And I just saw clients, they kind of threw me in the deep end, which in most ways was good. Even though I was like, oh my gosh, the first time I saw a client alone in the room, and I was like, what am I gonna say?

Erika Nordfelt [01:56:06] This, this is terrifying. And I didn't have a whole lot of mentorship. I did have a supervisor, but we only met like once a week. And so, yeah, they kind of just threw me in and I just started seeing clients. And so from there, from 2013 till a little bit after Covid, off and on, they had me come on. They usually had me come on a little bit into the semester because they had a lot of full time faculty. Well, I guess they didn't call them faculty. They had full time therapists there. And once their calendars were all full, they had the part time people come on to help with the wait list, which really happened rapidly.

Erika Nordfelt [01:56:44] Like there was a huge need on campus and a lot of students that were seeking out their services because they were free, which is awesome. I loved that. That was a resource. So I worked with college students for years and I kind of worked up to certain client loads. It kind of depended on the semester. At one point I had a baby and I went down in hours, but then I worked back up again. And that's where I got a lot of my clinical experience, which overlaps a little bit of my spiritual experience, because now I have a front row seat to very specifically Mormon suffering.

Erika Nordfelt [01:57:21] Not all of that had to do with religious stuff, of course. There's anxiety and depression and ptsd and, you know, all of. There was no specialty I had. I did not have the privilege of actually practicing a specialty because I just got whoever they threw at me. And we did couple stuff too, so which was good. Again, like, I had a good large base of experience. Other than the fact that I mostly worked with college students. I didn't get a lot of Good adolescent practice or like, you know, older adults.

John Dehlin [01:57:49] Was it called caps the Counseling center?

Erika Nordfelt [01:57:53] No, no, they just called it the Counseling center.

John Dehlin [01:57:56] And I'll just say when I applied to grad school, I applied to byu. And BYU Provo has a rich tradition of counseling and psychological services there in the basement of the Wilk. And I was just shocked at the very early stages of Mormon stories, how they were BYU CAPS psychologists who were followers of Mormon stories and not necessarily because they weren't believers or weren't committed to the church, but I was covering scrupulosity really early on. I was covering sexual shame and mental health and faith crisis support.

John Dehlin [01:58:40] And very, very quickly, BYU Provo counselors in the counseling center found Mormon stories content to be very useful. And then I was shocked as I got to know many of them who I don't know, I think none of them are still there. But they were very liberal, very progressive. And I, you know, as I was going through my faith crisis, I would have just assumed that the counselors at BYU Provost would have been really awful, terrible, you know, unprofessional, unethical practitioners. And it was the opposite in my experience.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:59:18] The professionals at BYU Counseling and Psychological Services were top notch, ethical professional, followed the ethical code, and even progressive by even modern Mormon standards in terms of how they would approach same sex, sexuality, suicidality, faith crisis porn, masturbation, all that stuff. Ocd, cutting edge, top notch. Now I can't say that's true today. I just got some disturbing reports just this week as I was putting out feelers about Clark Gilbert and BYU Provo. Now I give all that as a setup for the question of what, what are you able or comfortable to say about how BYU Idaho's counseling services was meeting the needs of its students?

Erika Nordfelt [02:00:09] Yes. Okay. First I'll comment on a couple things. Like it only makes sense actually that they found Mormon stories because those are the stories that were showing up in their office and we did not, and still I think do not have enough spaces therapeutically. There's some that are getting better. Mormon Mental Health Association I have to put in a plug.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:25] There is.

Erika Nordfelt [02:00:26] Natasha Helfer has started that. There's a lot of wonderful clinicians actually in the church and out of the church that are part of this association to provide really, really like research based, effective therapeutic approaches for Mormons specifically as a demographic.

Margi Dehlin [02:00:41] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:00:42] So it's no surprise to me that they're listening to Mormon stories because it's like, this is our clients. I want to know, like, what are John's thoughts What are their thoughts? Like we need more resources. And it doesn't also surprise me, even though there. I know it's not a perfect, it doesn't track perfectly. But I think in order to show up effectively as a therapist, really conservative perspectives are unethical. So you can't survive well and provide really good services if you are rigid and stuck in certain ways of viewing life and other.

Erika Nordfelt [02:01:17] That's my view. BYUI COUNSELING CENTER Wonderful people. And really not that I had experience of all of the other departments on campus, but the woes that I did, I was like, these are far more my people than anyone else. They are doing their best to provide really good services at a certain point. And this is its own other story. But I was part time for a long time and then was ready to go full time. And I interviewed and in that interview they asked me specifically like, you know, how do you use.

Erika Nordfelt [02:01:48] I can't remember how they worded it, but it was essentially like how do you utilize religious concepts with therapy? And they were looking to make sure that wasn't how it was. Leading sessions. They were basically checking to make sure that there was an ethical division. You know, if that is a part of a client's therapeutic path, we can lean into that. Of course, whatever that looks like for, for a client as much as I could with someone that's Jewish or Catholic or whatever.

Erika Nordfelt [02:02:13] But I'm not leading with that. That's unethical and that's actually really common for some. I have clients that are like, my therapist was telling me to write this bishop or to read this scripture passage or you know, things like that. That's very backwards. Like you can't lead with something that is not a therapy approach that is researched and backed. So my experience of the counseling center and the people there was great.

Erika Nordfelt [02:02:41] I didn't have as much association with them as I wanted because I was part time and I basically went in and I saw my clients and I left. They had a lot more interactions with the full time people. There were some I got close to and I really appreciated but I wished I could have a little bit more collaboration or you know, discussion of cases. They had those set up, those staffing things set up up for themselves. But I just wasn't privy to that because I, you know, wasn't a full time person. So overall, for byui, I can't. Yeah, I have only good things to say.

Margi Dehlin [02:03:13] Good.

Hitting a Wall: Sexual Shame in Clinical Practice

Erika Nordfelt [02:03:14] What was it like for you to,

Margi Dehlin [02:03:16] what would I say? Tap into the unique suffering of students and really seeing it through maybe more of a Mormon lens. And did that impact at all, your own kind of spiritual questioning?

Erika Nordfelt [02:03:34] Margaret, you're doing good. You're bringing me back to my story. Because we took a little detour because really that was the beginning of parts of, I would say, my spiritual exploration. It didn't turn into maybe deconstruction for a really long time, but I had a front row seat of that Mormon suffering. And it was too hard to not see the shame splattered everywhere. And that wasn't only sexual shame, but that was a huge piece of. I would say there was more sexual shame than there was generalized shame, but there was still a whole lot of all sorts of flavors of shame.

Erika Nordfelt [02:04:05] And so I came into this with my baby therapy skills and I'm seeing shame everywhere. And I actually discovered Pranae Brown, which she has incredible research based work around shame and shame resilience and empathy and vulnerability and all of that stuff. So I was like, sweet, here's all my clinical stuff, here's things that I'm learning from her. Like, let's take this into the therapy room. And that was a huge benefit and I think something that aided my clients a lot because I was seeing this shame, Some of it coming from religion, some of it coming from other places.

Erika Nordfelt [02:04:38] But that was the impetus of the suffering. That was. It wasn't just, I'm depressed. It's like, I'm depressed because I feel worthless because I masturbated. You know, that was a very, very common story. Or I feel worthless because I'm not perfect enough. You know, scrupulosity. I definitely discovered that. I actually had a client bring that in and I was like. Because he had read a book and he's like, I think I have scrupulosity. I was like, I have no idea what he's talking about. I need to look that up afterwards.

Erika Nordfelt [02:05:07] I never had classes on scrupulosity. I didn't understand what that is. It's a religious OCD for those that are out there. I know a whole lot about it now. I definitely, like got my experience in the trenches, so I'm trying to. That became my whole platform of like, how can I decrease this shame? How can I help people feel like they are like, I kind of said at the beginning that they have value and their value does not exist because they're achieving things or they are in certain relationships. Like, it just exists because they are alive.

Erika Nordfelt [02:05:39] And at that time they were again, a lot of compatibility with. With how I experienced Mormon doctrine that I was like, oh my gosh, this is totally in the scriptures. Oh, my gosh. Like godly shame versus worldly shame. That's the difference between shame and guilt or. No, it was godly sorrow before worldly sorrow. I think that that was in. That's in the New Testament somewhere. And I was like, ah, this is all making sense to me. So at that point, I also. That's when I got the idea to start writing my book, which we can talk about that at a certain point. But it was linking all of these mental health concepts, whether it was shame resilience or Brene Brown stuff or other stuff.

Erika Nordfelt [02:06:17] Like mindfulness is just praying people like you're doing it when you're going to the temple. Like, mindfulness is so good. It helps you ponder, it helps you be aware, it helps you feel close to God. Huge mental health skill and tool is mindfulness, as well as all these other things that I'm learning. And I'm thinking, gosh, the gospel is teaching us these things. So for a while, not.

Erika Nordfelt [02:06:41] I don't know if it strengthened my. I guess it strengthened my experience of the gospel. You know, the things that resonated with me, I was like, doubling down around, like, awesome, you know, love there. I'm already there. Like, these are already things that are helping us improve and helping us feel better.

Erika Nordfelt [02:07:00] And yet over time, as I'm using these models, there's some things where the shame still is getting stuck and getting stuck and getting stuck. So I'm like, I'm doing all these things that are actually clinically supposed to be help. Helping people feel better. It's supposed to be decreasing. The anxiety and depression and overall quality of life is supposed to increase. And in some ways it is. Some ways the shame is decreasing, and in some ways it's decreasing to a point, and it's totally getting stuck. And a lot of that, I would say, was around sexual shame. Far more was getting stuck with sexual shame than it was other generalized shame or religious shame or whatever kind of things you're gonna say around.

Erika Nordfelt [02:07:41] Around it. Because part of this, this treatment, you know, if we're looking at pornography and masturbation, and we're seeing this as an addiction at that point, and we're treating the addiction. And so if we're treating it, the idea is the treatment eliminates the behavior. You know, if I'm an alcoholic, I don't want to just. I'm not gonna be maybe a responsible drinker. I'm just. I need to get rid of that. So with. With pornography, with masturbation. We just need to get rid of that. That's kind of the approach.

Erika Nordfelt [02:08:10] And so I'm seeing shame actually as the impetus of the behavior, which, you know, there's a lot of theories how that's. We kind of already discussed that.

John Dehlin [02:08:18] Of how that leans into don't look in the closet. Don't look in the closet makes you want to look in the closet.

Erika Nordfelt [02:08:22] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:08:22] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:08:23] Yes. As well as just the distress of shame. Like, I look at pornography and I masturbate and I feel worthless and I feel shameful, and that's really depressing.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:31] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:08:32] And what helps me feel better, this coping mechanism that actually gives me a super. A super shot of, you know, all sorts of biochemicals that feel really good in an orgasm. And that's a temporary fix to this cycle. Now, I don't think that cycle is complete. I think it's more complex than that. But in these approaches we're seeing. I am seeing. I'm taking out this shame piece, and it's like, let's work on this. And then the behavior is going to decrease.

Erika Nordfelt [02:08:56] And it kind of did, but it didn't go to zero. So I was like, nothing is curing these people. Like, no one is get. Like, no one's sober. No one's sober forever. And I was getting so frustrated with that.

Erika Nordfelt [02:09:10] I also didn't have. There wasn't good researcher support. Not that my colleagues probably could have been helpful, but I had my own clinical shame. This is like, as a little baby therapist of, like, I don't know these things. I can't tell them I don't know these things. Like, I had maybe be issues around reaching out and trying to be more vulnerable of, like, this is what's showing up in my. My room. And I'm having a hard time around this as well as there were certain things that I was discussing differently, namely with masturbation that I was like, I don't know how they're going to handle that.

Erika Nordfelt [02:09:41] I was becoming far more aware actually, of the research around masturbation just specifically. And that's actually pretty healthy. Sometimes it can induce labor. It can decrease blood pressure, you know, can help with vagina. Dismiss that. I'm seeing this as not problematic at all. And in an appropriate fashion, everyone can kind of determine what that looks like. Anything in excess is unhealthy. We can say that about all sorts of behaviors. But to say it's happening frequently for any one person doesn't necessarily mean that it's problematic.

Erika Nordfelt [02:10:14] So it's like, okay, nothing's helping. I'M getting frustrated. I don't have other resources, but I am learning and I'm expanding my perspective of what this problem is. I'm becoming far more sex positive. I am also utilizing different ways to create more sex positivity with couples or with individuals. And now it's like I'm zooming out and I'm like, it's all sourcing from somewhere. It's all sourcing. It was hard for me to not see all of this is a systemic problem.

Erika Nordfelt [02:10:48] Not just because of, like, the addiction model that was so leaned into and still kind of is, but so the purity culture. Also just lack of transparency. People don't talk about this unless it's in the curated group where we can talk about it like it doesn't get talked at Elders Quorum or in Relief Society, even though ideally that should be where people are really reliant on each other and really opening up.

John Dehlin [02:11:14] Does IDO have. Ido have sex? Like, high school sex education?

Erika Nordfelt [02:11:18] I think it's just abstinence.

John Dehlin [02:11:19] Yeah. And then Utah is something called maturation. But, like, people like, you know, Brad. What's his name? The. The young men's presidency.

Erika Nordfelt [02:11:29] Wilcox.

John Dehlin [02:11:30] Brad Wilcox goes around and literally teaches of a mini sex education course. That's actually. Yeah, it's weird. Like, there's no sex education in Utah, right? Oh, I think.

Erika Nordfelt [02:11:45] Yes. I think my kids had. I don't know if they had a whole lot about. We will say sex and intercourse, but about puberty and differences in bodies and health. Health. Yeah, sexual health. Even though I don't think that's complete. Because sexuality is piece of that sexual health that they need to discuss with children.

John Dehlin [02:12:02] But contraception and.

Erika Nordfelt [02:12:03] Yeah, I don't think so. Again, I'd have to. To actually ask my kids or my husband. He went to school in Rexburg too. But my guess is it's far insufficient. Underdeveloped. Yeah, Insufficient.

John Dehlin [02:12:17] Okay. So sorry, you were making a list. And poor education.

Erika Nordfelt [02:12:21] This is. This is, I think, just part of the larger issue of at least sexual shame. Because, again, sexual shame was where I was hitting the wall the most.

Margi Dehlin [02:12:27] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:12:28] Like, yes, there was other shame points that were still really hard to get through, but it was like, okay, well, we still have to feel shame if the behavior is still repeating. So you could never get past, like, with perfectionism, which was also a different flavor of shame. You know, if they could accept being imperfect, they could have far more resilience because there's no, like, zero tolerance of mistakes or perceived it was more acceptable to be imperfect. That Wasn't demonized. That wasn't really overtly a shameful thing. It was just, you know, a different form of suffering around this. But with these sexual shame issues, it's like, you know, it's been two months and I slipped.

Erika Nordfelt [02:13:09] I slipped quotations again, people. And it, oh, I'm just back down there again. I'm back down and I can't. I must still just be worthless. I must not be good enough for God. And that was a really common thing you guys probably have seen in like, your coaching and your experience, experiences with people that this belief of, I believe, inherent worth for everyone else. I've served missions, you know, I could ask them to tell me all these stories of people that, you know, on paper maybe shouldn't feel very worth, worth it, very valuable.

Erika Nordfelt [02:13:44] And yet they so very desperately believed, oh, yeah, that worth exists for everyone but me. I am the one exception that really I'm supposed to be better or different for God or for family. But really, like, if I'm talking about relationship with God, there was a flaw that was a very common internalized belief of like, I'm the one exception. And I can't be at least imperfect in this way, especially when it comes to sexual shame, because I actually have to be perfect or I have, or I just never can. You know, maybe the shame is so overwhelming. It's not a. About being perfect or getting rid of it. It's just like I inherently believe that I am worthless. And that's so deep, it's soaked into my bones. I can't move that.

Margi Dehlin [02:14:27] Okay, okay, wait. Can I step out for one, one second just to update on you and Brady for a second?

Erika Nordfelt [02:14:35] Yes.

Personal and Marital Growth Through This Period

Margi Dehlin [02:14:36] Okay. So during, I guess, you know, we've gone to a broader narrative. What I'm curious about is during this time. So now you're in rest, you're working at the counseling center. Is Brady still in admissions? Okay, so during this time, how did you all. How were you relating to porn, masturbation during this time, did you put it on a shelf and just kind of. And then focus on different things? Did it become ultra defining, something that was looming that you really felt, but tried to. To kind of deny? Like, how did you. I guess. How did it show up in your relationship during these years? Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:15:19] So good, because there's two parallel timelines that are relevant actually to my spiritual journey. Part of it's personal and part of it is professional. And of course there's overlap. So, yes, during this time, I'm learning these things. I'm working with clients I'm seeing it over and over and it's still somehow showing up in my personal life, which was evolving again. We had better communication skills. I think we were trying to deal with it in different ways, but it wasn't gone. It wasn't like he was again sober or free from it. And there was ups and downs, I would say, to a less suffering design like it.

Erika Nordfelt [02:15:55] We still had hard points, but we were rallying from them and we could handle it. And it didn't feel as hopeless. But because of this, I've got personal meaning and I got professional meaning. I am doubling down and trying to learn things like that was also part of my understanding of just better sexual health concepts and sex positivity. I was listening to all sorts of podcasts and I was desperately trying to find more resources that helped me personally as well as professionally. So things like Jennifer Finlanson Fife.

Erika Nordfelt [02:16:26] I didn't actually discover Natasha for a really long time. I wish I had discussed discovered her earlier. There was other places that were positive and there's other ones that actually weren't so great. Some podcasts that really leaned into the addiction model that, you know, I didn't maybe know as much at that point to recognize how I. That that wasn't good therapy.

Erika Nordfelt [02:16:48] But personally, I feel like we were mostly on an upward tick. But there was some still ebbs and flows of that. Like it was still. Still difficult at times, still hard for one or the other. And it's interesting because I think Brady probably was going through his own process of that too, of, like, what this meant for him, how it showed up between the two of us, maybe how he was starting to even view those experiences. But we did come to a turning point. And actually this is interesting, I think for us as a couple, as well as maybe our spiritual journeys that we came to a.

Erika Nordfelt [02:17:29] Well, okay, we were discussing this. There was. There was two turning points for him and only one that I remembered, that we were starting to talk more openly and more directly and. Oh, gosh, I'm not remembering what he said. Like, there was a conversation where I said, brady, you're gonna have to tell me what I said that was so meaningful to you.

Erika Nordfelt [02:17:52] Oh, he was saying he was more direct and he's like, what do you want from me? You know, as we're somewhat repeating a struggle, like interaction over and over again. Sometimes that was better, sometimes that wasn't. And so I asked him what he wanted from me, and he said that he needed me to be less reactive. He needed me to have, you know, Less of an emotional overwhelm with that around. Around him. Disclosing, really, of any time that he was gonna bring it up. And so for him, that was a big turning point. Not only to say that to me.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:25] Yes, state of need.

Erika Nordfelt [02:18:25] Yes. But then for me to be responsive to that, that I could be more aware of how much my reactions. And it's funny now that I'm realizing I probably painted that maybe not completely accurate, like his experience maybe wasn't that I was reacting, acting well all the time. When earlier I was maybe discussing that I was just handling this perfect. I wasn't. I was an imperfect person. So that was a turning point for him to feel like, okay, it's safer for him to talk about this. It's safer for him to be himself. The second turning point was. And it's interesting because I think this question had lingered for me, but for whatever reason, I was maybe afraid to ask it, even though I think even from some therapy platforms, I had known it was a good question to ask.

Erika Nordfelt [02:19:11] I asked him, what does he even look at? Which was scary, because it's like, you know, outside of that information, you're thinking of all these, you know, really inappropriate and abusive and scary or whatever. You're not thinking of anything. But just the absence of information can be really scary. And Whitney told me. I was like, oh, that doesn't. I probably could have guessed that, that that's something that you like, or whether it was the content or the frequency, it wasn't actually as scary or as alarming. And at this point, of course, I've had a lot of experience with clients with myriads of ways of that, how that showed up.

John Dehlin [02:19:48] It wasn't pathological.

Erika Nordfelt [02:19:49] No, no, it was not pathological.

John Dehlin [02:19:52] Normative.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:52] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [02:19:53] And it wasn't even threatening to me that it was like, okay, I can handle that. Maybe I like that, too. That's exciting. Sure. And I've seen that play out with other couples when they can be more honest around it, as long as they can do it without that judgment. Because some might have more, I would say, extreme interests or fetishes or whatever. Fetishes, yes. And fetish, even by itself, has a very negative connotation when it doesn't have to be.

Erika Nordfelt [02:20:21] So I know that's not everyone's experience, but it's been pretty common that I've had clients that do that. And. And it's like, oh, okay. Which is remarkable on two accounts for the partner that's opening up. Oh, my gosh. Like, for Brady, he felt like she knows okay, great. Like, I can be me now. Like, there's now nothing else I'm withholding from her. And I can fully be myself, which is very connective. And for me, now that I know that, it's like, oh, I don't have to be afraid now. I understand this behavior more fully as. As well as, I think in those parts of time, we also were shedding off some of the sexual shame around it.

Erika Nordfelt [02:21:00] And it didn't have to be this scary thing for us. So we were having ups and downs as well as actually some pretty significant turning points during this time.

John Dehlin [02:21:08] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:21:09] That were overlapping with just our personal

Margi Dehlin [02:21:11] journey and I would imagine. But answer this. How much did you know? Your clinical experience, as well as receiving more education about porn and masturbation, help deconstruct the religious messaging around it and allow you actually to move into a state of feeling more of what it would mean to be safe for Brady.

Erika Nordfelt [02:21:37] Yes. As well as Margi. You're just so good at these questions. Cause it's a perfect segue into like, it was. Yes. It was so good for us. I was learning things that helped us heal as a couple. And now that I was learning things and. And seeing how it was healthier and better, when I come back to the systemic issue, I was developing some really strong disagreements of, like, that's actually not okay. And this is kind of the beginning.

Erika Nordfelt [02:22:04] It is not okay the way the church is talking about sexuality. It's not okay. Even the way we're talking about porn or masturbation and assuming that this is just an other person problem. There was this. I can't remember what calling I had. I think it was another. I was in young women's presidency twice. So I think it was the second time. There was some leadership meeting that was local. They had some outside kind of expert coming to talk to local leaders. We had stake presidents, we had bishops, we had other people that were invited to this just gathering. And it was all about. I can't remember exactly, like, what their presentation was.

Erika Nordfelt [02:22:38] My guess, it was something along the lines of the addiction model of, you know, how to deal with this problematic behavior. No, they wouldn't have said compulsive, because that's too clinical, this addiction. And I remember sitting there actually fuming and saying, stop this lie that this is everyone else's problem. I'm in a room full of probably hundreds of men, and I know the majority of them have experienced some type of variation of this.

John Dehlin [02:23:06] Including the bishops.

Erika Nordfelt [02:23:07] Including the bishops, including the stake president. And they're just Sitting here talking about how can we help our members and how can we help our couples and da, da, da, da, like, as if this is not a bigger issue. The lack of vulnerability and transparency was starting to suffocate me. It was making me so, so upset.

John Dehlin [02:23:26] And also the idea that it can be cured, that anyone within a normal sort of bell curve range can go to zero for years.

Margi Dehlin [02:23:38] Yeah, they can be cured. And here are some of the pathways we'll use. Like whether that's reading your scriptures, praying it away, doing verses, righteousness, atonement, or your wife and the aa, you just

Erika Nordfelt [02:23:52] need to do that more. Because here is the most damaging part of that is so many of my clients were doing those things. And so when they're doing those things and you're telling them, praying, reading the scriptures, that is what cures them and. And they're still struggling. Well, it must be because I'm inherently flat. Again, it's a perfect recipe for shame.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] That's just like religious conversion therapy where pray the gay away. If you're serving in three callings and fasting and hyper religious praying, reading your scriptures and you're gay and God doesn't take it away. God's all powerful. You must be so evil. You're beyond gods.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:27] Exactly.

Erika Nordfelt [02:24:27] Yeah. There's a reason, reason why he's excluding you.

John Dehlin [02:24:29] And that's when the suicidality comes. For the LGBT Mormon population, I've had

Erika Nordfelt [02:24:34] different interactions with like seminary teachers and even bishops and something I always either want to or do, say depending on the relationship and circumstance, is like, just don't tell them to pray more, don't tell them to read the scripture, don't at all. That is not.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] Or even to rely on the atonement.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:51] Right.

John Dehlin [02:24:52] Like we in Mormonism, the atonement is the most powerful thing.

Erika Nordfelt [02:24:56] That's what's supposed to be the magic thing. And yet they're doing those things and it's not. God is not taking this from them. And we are told, we are told especially. And so this is one of the flaws with the 12 step group. A lot of that rhetoric was in there. If you're faithful enough, if you're diligent enough, God will take this from you very literally. That's the words. And yet these people are going years, whether it's individually, a couple, and God's not taking them. It from them. Taking it from them. Because of course, again, they're aiming at zero. That is the only acceptable answer to all of this.

John Dehlin [02:25:27] Yeah. Yep.

Erika Nordfelt [02:25:28] So I was getting pretty feisty again. Still holding on. I had, like. I was in these two camps of, like, okay, I'm hanging on to the things I love. Community, you know, Christ, like, love. All these things that have already resonated with me my whole life. I am holding on to this, and I am actually starting to be more verbal and vocal around things that aren't okay. And I.

Faith Deconstruction and Leaving the Church

Margi Dehlin [02:25:53] So is this crisis point? Are we at crisis point?

Erika Nordfelt [02:25:55] This is the beginning of crisis point. But I didn't know it. I just saw that as, like, this is my new charge. Not only do I have experience, I also have, like, I have professional backing to support when I bring this into conversations to help people look at it differently, which was a privilege. Like, I hope I didn't take that for granted. Maybe I did because being a female alone wasn't enough. Being a professional female still sometimes wasn't enough.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:21] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:26:22] There was a point when I was in ward council and Brady would joke every time I come home. He's like, what'd you say this time, Erica? Because I was usually just, like, so bristly, and I'm like, ugh. I was so frustrated about something. And I was in that work council. I've been in other word councils where I didn't have that experience, but that one, I was pretty consistently overlooked and, like, dismissed. They were not interested in what I had to say.

Erika Nordfelt [02:26:46] So that was. That was difficult. So, yes, it was the beginning of. I feel like the end, which lasted for probably five years of this. I'm seeing these larger issues. I've got all these holes poked into at least my experience of the gospel.

Erika Nordfelt [02:27:04] But again, I'm holding on really strong to the other things that are important. So I'm shelfing things to the point that it wasn't just a shelf. It was like this armoire. You know, I had drywall screws holding it in. But I'm throwing things into there because I'm so committed to, like, Jesus loves you and I love you, and let's just stick to that. Can we just. Which is a trend. I feel like those most in distress are. Again, this is my experience, but my experience with a fair amount of. Of spiritual trauma. I would say they. Those that are still hanging on are doubling down around Christ.

Erika Nordfelt [02:27:40] Like, love. Like, that is their anchor. And so that was my anchor for a long time. There was also the idea of I will be the change, which. It makes me smile and cry a little bit.

John Dehlin [02:27:53] Yes, you can be the one. I can be the change.

Erika Nordfelt [02:27:55] Or at least I can be part of it. Yeah, I was at this Point, like, hearing other conversations that resonated a lot. And I was like, I want to add my voice to theirs. What they're saying, like, resonates. Some of that was from a therapy perspective or some. It was just something else. And I really felt like, okay, people listen to me. I obviously, I know that. That I, throughout my whole life, have had a personality that people are comfortable with and they're drawn to. And so it's like, I don't want to. I don't want to abuse that, but I want to use that for good.

Erika Nordfelt [02:28:30] And so I had that message kind of running through over and over for a while. I also had a certain turn point, though. I don't know if it was a turning point, but it was a struggle that, again, I'm zooming out, I'm seeing things systemically. And I was starting to struggle with the idea of revelation. Not that I didn't think it happened, but I was like, ah, we're saying all these things are revelation and they're not like, so all five.

John Dehlin [02:28:56] Couple examples, yes.

Erika Nordfelt [02:28:57] So all five of my sisters had been in, like, leadership positions. We're also pretty charismatic women. You know, we see that in professional things, we see that in social things. Like, we have personalities that are good leaders that are. That make.

Erika Nordfelt [02:29:15] That just do well in those types of callings. And we have had lots of those types of callings. At one point, I think four of the five of us were all in a presidency and it was kind of fun. We mostly just, like, called to, like, complain and struggle with each other. And when we got released, we're like, yay, congratulations. Because we got how hard it was. But we were also cheering and encouraging each other on. So it's like, I'm noticing these personalities, and especially in Rexburg, you add that population in those personalities are the ones that pop up. And I was like, like noticing my husband, who is just as capable, and I was coming off of this, but there was still this little bit of hope of, like, oh, I want him in a leadership position because of the.

Erika Nordfelt [02:29:59] Because of the status or the blessings. You know, it's like a little bit wanted that that desire was decreasing, you know, as these, you know, other experiences were increasing. That was definitely stronger earlier on in our marriage of like, yes, I want to encourage him towards leadership because that is somewhat the definition of, you know, success. Success. You know, it's kind of that. Yeah, it's that hierarchy.

Erika Nordfelt [02:30:25] But I was coming to this place where I'm like, he is no less capable of any of these Leadership positions. He's just the personality that's not going to assume that unless you actually give him a title. He actually was really good at flying under the radar in words on purpose because he just, he had no interest of climbing ladders. He's not that type of personality. But I was like, God knows that he can do that just as well. Like, if God has to know him the way I know him, he's highly capable. He's very creative. He's actually a good leader and can be pretty charismatic as you get to know him on a face to face value.

Erika Nordfelt [02:30:59] Some people think that he's kind of quiet. He's not quiet at all. But so I was like, seeing this example of, like, okay, we're saying that that's inspiration, but I don't know, I feel like my experience of God. Let's just say that these are our ideas. Let's not pretend that all these callings are these magical, like, inspirations from God, because chances are it was just a good idea that person fit the pill. And so I think that was in line with this desire for more transparency, for more vulnerability, for more honesty that just, I. I wasn't seeing that around and I was getting really frustrated.

Erika Nordfelt [02:31:35] And that wasn't even as much a. Like, this is shaking my faith. It was just like, let's be more honest. It's okay if you call them to your presidency and you don't really know if God told you that, but you didn't feel bad about it, so you went along with the idea. Like, I was just crying for more of this transparency because I also was seeing, going to church and hearing how people were interacting, hearing testimony meetings, which is a little sad. I loved testimony meeting for so long until I realized, oh, you know, I'm working with people and I know what's really going on in their life.

Erika Nordfelt [02:32:11] And nobody talks about the real stuff. No one really is opening up and being vulnerable. Which again, back to Brene Brown. Principles of vulnerability leading to connection. I knew that that was how it actually would bless us. You know, that's far better for us if we're able to be vulnerable and real and honest and connect with each other. And that was. I just felt like it was nowhere, like nothing was very real.

Erika Nordfelt [02:32:35] So then that's also starting to kind of like, make me feel suffocated or that's poking these holes or putting things on the shelf, however you want to see it. And at a certain point, Brady and I had some interactions with, like, other people that were kind of deciding to Leave the church.

Erika Nordfelt [02:32:57] I wasn't really getting into any anti Mormon literature, but I was maybe exploring truth claims from the safe Mormon perspective. And at a certain point, like, through what venue? So, like, the essays. I think I read the essays, the gospel topics essays.

John Dehlin [02:33:10] Okay.

Erika Nordfelt [02:33:11] And honestly, I don't remember. There might have been one podcast, but it was because we got to a point where we were like, okay, we're officially done, even though we weren't able to fully be done. Like, I'll tell that story in a second. So before we officially were like, okay, we're ready to pull the plug. I'm trying to think what led up to that. And I think it was a lot of more me just feeling and reassessing things and asking, like, how do I feel about that? Seeing how the church organizes things, seeing how, you know, like, interviews, and not only how they're dealing with sexual shame, but just kind of how it operates at large.

John Dehlin [02:33:51] Worthiness interviews.

Erika Nordfelt [02:33:53] Worthiness interviews. I'm also seeing that it's like, oh, we are. Like, there's so much shaming language in the scriptures in, like, I was just seeing all these red flags. There was one podcast that I listened to. It was from a previous BYU professor historian, and it was around the happiness letter. And I didn't know any of that stuff. That was pretty shocking to me.

John Dehlin [02:34:16] This is Joseph Smith sending a letter to, I believe, a teenage girl, basically manipulating her into a sexual relationship by claiming that what's unrighteous or wicked in one context is righteous in another. It's basically Joseph, I believe it's Nancy Rigdon. Sidney Rigdon's daughter.

Margi Dehlin [02:34:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:34:38] Basically saying to her, what God calls wicked in one circumstance can be righteous in another if his prophet's involved. And I kind of am hot for you.

Erika Nordfelt [02:34:48] Yes. Was that the one that he used, the flaming sword, or is that in a different way?

John Dehlin [02:34:53] But all that starts to come together when you start seeing Joseph Smith's approach to grooming young teenagers, girls, into sexual relationships. Sending the husband on a mission, coercing them to promise that their family will inherit eternal salvation, making them decide immediately, condemning them, shaming them publicly if they deny his advances and speak publicly about it all, that's. And claiming that an angel with the flaming sword threatens that if he doesn't have sex with these teenage girls, that God's gonna kill Joseph. Like, all of that starts just becoming. It's as if it happened with one woman, but it happened with several teenagers.

Erika Nordfelt [02:35:37] Yeah. And I remember specifically what hit me with that. So, I mean, really, the historian was from my recollection, was presenting it rather unbiasedly of like, this is just what the letter says, and this is kind of what was happening. And yet there are specific passages of that letter that had been showing up. Like, the letter as a whole is. It's kind of. It's very obvious that that was coercion. You can't really disagree with that. And then there's pieces of that happiness letter that are used in other contexts in conference talks and all this stuff. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh. That was pretty triggering for me, because up to this point, I've dealt with a lot of abuse and trauma, you know, in myriad of contexts.

John Dehlin [02:36:18] Did you see a lot of sexual abuse in Rexburg?

Erika Nordfelt [02:36:23] Yes. Like, with my client. No. I mean, it's definitely there. It's definitely there in all sorts of forms. All the classic forms. My client load on campus had it here and there, but maybe not prevalently. There's even like a. There's a crisis center there. Like, there's good support for stuff like that in our area because, yeah, it's definitely there. And on campus, it's there again. And this is like a consent thing. Like, I've got a lot of thoughts and opinions on. There is sexual assault just amongst the students pretty rampantly because people don't know consent, and there's inappropriate boundaries and all of that.

Erika Nordfelt [02:36:57] So. But I had either seen it with direct clients or different versions of where abuse shows up for people or just damaging behavior, just like, coercion at large. And because of my experience, of course, I could see how that could create such trauma for any individual.

Erika Nordfelt [02:37:16] So, again, not any one big thing, but I feel like the truth claims were starting to take out my legs. I didn't have a. Like, my foundation was pretty shaky initially anyways, but the truth claims were like, okay, there's, like, nothing left. And so when that bottom basically fell out, there wasn't really much left to support it. At the same. Well, and at roughly the same time, like Brady and I, this actually has nothing to do with the sexuality piece of our relationship that we've been talking about, but just our relationship in general. We had started again, and we had said that there were some friends that were leaving the church, and we had talked to them and were really, like, you know, supportive and curious, but empathetic to their journey.

Erika Nordfelt [02:37:58] And it was starting to allow us to be more honest of things that we were struggling with. I wouldn't say it was like, oh, we feel exactly like them. And because I think People could look at that and be like, oh, they were a negative influence. No, what they did is provide us permission to be fully honest with ourself and with each other, with things that we've been struggling with, like, all along.

Erika Nordfelt [02:38:20] So we were starting to have those conversations of, like, oh, how do you feel about this? And what do you think about this? And Brady had. I mean, that was big for him. I think I had already discussed things that I'd struggled with.

Erika Nordfelt [02:38:32] Maybe not in a way that's like, this is ending it for me, but this is just like, again, like, the. The leadership thing. I'm just so bad. But it didn't feel like it was. Yeah, that it was threatening my faith, even though it was, you know, in the long term, I look, I'm looking at it. It's like, yeah, that was putting cracks in the foundation, but he had had some things that he didn't feel like he could really share with me. He wasn't, you know, similar to the disclosure of anything else. He's like, I don't know how she would take it. And opened a really good, safe place for us to start discussing more how we felt, including what was going on for him and what was going on for me.

Erika Nordfelt [02:39:09] So we. And again, this doesn't happen for all couples. I felt very fortunate that it's like, we were on these parallel paths for very different reasons. Like, his what took him out in the end was actually not the same as what took me out. There might be some similar things, but we were on these parallel paths enough that it didn't feel threatening to one or the other. And our timelines coincided pretty well to the point that, really, when we pulled the plug, and we pretend to pull the plug, and I'll tell you why that we really decided. I think we're done, we were able to do it together and have that somewhat decisive point, turning point.

Erika Nordfelt [02:39:48] At the same time. Not all couples have that. And I know that it can be really rough. Worked with couples in that space. So, like, I'm very, very grateful. But up until that point, like, we'd been having, you know, coming home from church. Okay, how are you doing? How was that for you? Okay. Today was okay or. No, this was really hard. And we had all these, like, little mini conversations to the point that when we went and we talked to our kids, we talked to our parents pretty quickly after we had decided.

Erika Nordfelt [02:40:17] And our son, he was like, I totally thought you guys were gonna get a divorce. You were just talking secretly about all these things. And he, you know, in his anxious little brain was thinking that that meant that we were gonna separate, when really, I mean, it was still probably equally emotional, but for very different reasons, we weren't gonna get divorced. So we made that decision. But here we are. Brady works on campus.

Erika Nordfelt [02:40:42] I kind of am a part time person. We have a type 1 diabetic, and relying on the health insurance was a big deal. We didn't have a plan B for him yet as far as, like, what was next.

Erika Nordfelt [02:40:54] So in the midst of trying to figure out what that next shift looked like, we had to stay going to church, because to be working on campus, you have to be attending. And I didn't, you know, in this mix of time and, oh, I guess there's a little story about leaving the counseling center, but I had gone into private practice, so at this point, I didn't need to actually keep going to church, but just based on our relationship, I felt like it was better to leave together. So I was, you know, still attending and okay too. Even though there was a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Erika Nordfelt [02:41:28] Oh, it was hard as well as it felt dishonest. It's like I feel like I'm misrepresenting myself by coming here. But I had bigger, more meaningful reasons to keep going so that we could stay united. You know, people might have differing views on whether that's united or not, and I don't really care. Like, it felt right for me to keep going.

John Dehlin [02:41:46] Well, we were learning more and more that the church now has a history of firing employees if their spouse loses their faith and leaves the church. That's a thing. It's a thing in ces. It's a thing in BYU employment. It's a thing at church headquarters. And you're. And Brady was working at byu, Idaho.

Erika Nordfelt [02:42:06] And it wasn't even just the insurance, too, like his retirement. He'd heard stories where that actually was, like, you know, withdrawn and so that. Those were all scary stories that maybe we didn't have firsthand accounts of, but we didn't want to risk it. You know, we'd worked a long time to build certain things, and we had to have good health care for our daughter. Like, died diabetics, they're expensive.

Erika Nordfelt [02:42:27] So we just had to be very intentional. And so over the span of about 8 months, we were figuring and reconfiguring and thinking of different strategies. And in the end, and it's actually lovely now that we finally get to this point, he left campus. I was in private practice. We decided to grow into a group practice. And he came on, and he is and has been running the whole business side. So that was his exit. We still had to get, like, individual insurance, which is so expensive, and as the business grows, so does our premium. But it's been worth that. It's been very gratifying. It's been a good change.

Erika Nordfelt [02:43:05] And so at that point, when he finally quit was when we. We had told some family members up until then, like, when we initially were like, I'm done. I was like, I'm gonna blast this out to everyone. But by the time we actually, actually were, like, really pulling the plug, at least not going to church anymore, there wasn't very many people I felt like it was relevant to tell. We told our neighbors because we live on a small street, and I just wanted them to be aware they wouldn't be seeing us at church. And I think I told one or two bishopric members and that was it.

Life After Leaving: Therapy Practice and Sexual Healing

Margi Dehlin [02:43:33] Has it impacted at all your decision to leave, or. I guess as that has become more public knowledge, has it affected your therapy practice at all?

Erika Nordfelt [02:43:44] I was super scared about that because there was also clients that had spanned this for me. You know, that had started with me, and I was somewhat overtly, like, I was very professing to, you know, going to church. I was maybe sharing little stories here and there. They knew that I was still a regular attending person. And then years down the road, I'm no longer. And yet bringing that into a therapy relationship is inappropriate. My life is not what's relevant. It's theirs. But sometimes I felt like I may be misrepresenting or they're making assumptions within this relationship that is unfair. So that was tough. I feel like there was one or two clients that I felt like it was appropriate to tell them just so that they knew, just so that they were on the same page.

Erika Nordfelt [02:44:27] And there's some others that I think have either figured it out or it doesn't matter. It's not going to have any bearing. But it was a concern. And for a lot of professionals, actually, in Rexburg, different types of providers, not even just therapy, like, I've heard of doctors I've heard of, like, yeah. Other types of providers, even people like, in political, like, positions, that their decisions around this or how they're perceived as the public can really have a damaging effect on their career.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:58] Absolutely. Trust. Yes. Right. It kind of can affect how.

Erika Nordfelt [02:45:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:03] I was going to ask. A lot of times Mormon bishops have a list of approved therapists and they make referrals.

Erika Nordfelt [02:45:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:09] So were you worried about losing bishop referrals if you left the church a little bit.

Erika Nordfelt [02:45:13] But that referral system in Rexburg isn't the same because everyone makes referrals. Again, since everyone's Mormon, you don't rely unless you work for family services. Family services only works off of referrals from bishops, but in the community, like Rexburg, like, you're going to get referrals from all sorts of other people. People that it. I don't think, like, in Colorado, I was on a list, and I was really excited about that because that was going to bring me a specific type of clientele that, you know, set me apart. In Rexburg, it was a little bit different. I don't think I relied on that.

John Dehlin [02:45:43] It's more word of mouth.

Erika Nordfelt [02:45:45] And luckily, because this isn't everyone's experience, like, I was able to build my practice and my client load fairly well, and it stayed at that. So I wasn't at the point where I. I was pulling away. I had a pretty solid and stable client load, so I wasn't as concerned. I was more concerned about the clients I already was seeing and how it was going to affect them. That was my biggest concern.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:08] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:46:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:46:10] So I don't know if this is something you want to talk about next, but, I mean, I'm curious how your sexual relationship evolved from the standpoint of this trauma of shame dynamic.

Margi Dehlin [02:46:22] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [02:46:23] Can I tell you? One of the best things for my sexual development was leaving the church, and not even cognitively. My mom is so sweet. We had her own experience with dealing with this and me talking to her, but for the most part, we've had a really good, safe place where I could discuss this. And she was like, has it helped your sex life? It's like, yeah. But it's not that anything specific in our sex life actually has changed. It's like, I honestly felt like. Like this visceral lift that maybe wasn't immediate, but it was over time of, like, it is okay to be in my body, it is okay to feel sexual.

Erika Nordfelt [02:47:00] It is okay to explore this however I want that. That was extremely liberating. And we still are evolving. You know, like, our sex life still has been something that always needs work with us. Like, other parts of our relationship are really solid. So, you know, every couple has the area that they. And I think that still is in sex for us, but it has come a long way. And it was leading up to that point because, again, I was shedding a lot of this sexual shame. I was changing my perspectives. We were as a couple, as far as just how we Looked at sex and how we were, you know, integrating that to ourselves personally.

Erika Nordfelt [02:47:35] But for me and my experience of my own desire, it was like there was this subconscious veil to use that playfully. That was like, dropped from my eyes and for my. Just how I felt, even in myself.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:54] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:47:55] It was incredibly healing, actually.

Margi Dehlin [02:47:57] Yeah. That makes so much sense to me because I do feel like for myself, for many of the women I've worked with, that. That transition, like, away from the church or, you know, it allows for the. It's like it's a death of an identity almost. But that identity was absolutely. Really. It had a lot of control over the sexual self piece for a lot of women. That was true for me, too. And so I really relate to that because on some level, when you transition out, that identity actually dies, which leaves women and a lot of people, not just women, but men, like, really having this sense of, like, who am I?

Erika Nordfelt [02:48:41] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:43] But within that, you actually have the freedom without all that messaging, without all that baggage that you're carrying. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:48:52] And I think the funny thing for me is I thought that I had shed a lot of that. I had done a lot of work up to the point before we left. So I was like, no, of course I'm in a good place. But there genuinely was a visceral, subconscious element that I could not. Cognitive.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:06] I love that you say it was

Erika Nordfelt [02:49:07] like a trauma that was totally released.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:09] It was like in. It's more in the body. It's more emotional.

Erika Nordfelt [02:49:13] It's more.

Margi Dehlin [02:49:14] Versus. Because I would have been with you. I think cognitively I would have said all the. But I didn't actually feel it.

Erika Nordfelt [02:49:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is so unfortunate that I wish I could give that to people regardless of what they're doing. That's religion, you know, like. But that also goes into maybe trauma work. Trauma work, you know, is far more in the body than it is in the brain. And since then, I'm far more of a trauma therapist now in my work. So I see things in a very specific way. And that must have been how it was logged for me, that it was just, you know, into my body of how I was supposed to feel around those things. And when I take away that script, that. That environment, that whatever it is you call it, it's lifted. It's a clean slate now, and I get to be whatever I want.

Margi Dehlin [02:50:00] So as a. If we were to kind of have you bring together your personal experience and let's see, I'm going to have you start with just because it's One of your major themes, the porn, masturbation and I would say developing your own sexual self as well. Right. So if we were going to have you blend those and say this, here are some things that I feel really good about that work or that are good. And here are things that research wise like to do's not to do. Not in an overly simplistic way, but just as a general way of speaking about it.

Erika Nordfelt [02:50:39] And are you meaning therapeutically or personally or both or whatever.

John Dehlin [02:50:43] If Margi, I can sort of parallel your question. A Mormon or ex Mormon couple comes to you and says, okay, the Mormon approach to porn and masturbation is not working. It's a disaster. We don't want to go down that road. What road do we go down? How do we deal with porn and masturbation in our marriage? Individually and as a couple, that's healthy.

Erika Nordfelt [02:51:05] So with that, because that's very literally happened before because they come in also fixating on the behavior of like, this is what's harmful, this is what's hard for us. And maybe they're even like trying to separate from the Mormon script. That all by itself is actually pretty useful. I think it has a similar effect.

John Dehlin [02:51:22] Aside from leaving the church.

Erika Nordfelt [02:51:24] Aside from leaving the church. Because of course I'm not going to tell someone to do that.

John Dehlin [02:51:27] It's unethical. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:51:28] And it's pretty tricky to figure out how to navigate this without challenging directly some of those religious perspectives. But I zoom out and I said instead of focusing on this behavior, let's talk about there's a lot of sex education. Let's normalize what happens within ourselves and within our bodies so that we can actually see the behavior differently. So I do a lot of sex education initially of yeah, it's arousal in your body isn't something you have any control over. It just happens just like sweating, you know, and so to look at. And then they're maybe looking back at their life history where the sexual shame showed in like we're discussing, discussing sexual shame or just discussing like their life history.

Erika Nordfelt [02:52:15] If it's with a couple where I'm wanting more history, I'm wanting more of their context, but then we're maybe exploring where some of that has actually worked against them. And again, you have to be delicate with this because if I've got a couple and it's like, okay, well you're struggling and every time he talks to you about it, you crumble and cry and he can't talk to you for three days. Well, and then you're surprised that he's secretive, that's problematic. And it makes sense that you're crying and crumbling for three days. Like, there has to be a lot of empathy, but yet it breaks down the capacity for you guys to actually handle what's going on in this relationship and move through it.

Erika Nordfelt [02:52:53] So sometimes there's individual pieces of distress tolerance that we have to work through. I normalize also other aspects of, like, I probably sometimes not probably. I am. I'm pretty direct around aspects of sexual health. Health like masturbation can be pretty healthy. And here's some research that shows about that. You know, sexual imagery is seen in certain ways, but sometimes research doesn't support that. So I'm giving them a myriad of ways to look at things. I also do a lot of value work and. And value work separate from any values they've been given from family or church or school or society at large of them really dialing into who they feel like they are at their core and at their.

Erika Nordfelt [02:53:32] Their core integrity, and then being able to move through that, like, move from that space. So it's like if you know what those core values are for yourself or maybe you know what compatible values show up for your as a couple. Okay, now let's navigate this.

Erika Nordfelt [02:53:48] What of this actually does seem problematic? Or it's. It's maybe supposed to be problematic. You know, how much of that really is actually affecting your sex life? I'm picking apart pieces. You know, with the wife, if there is that body shame or if there's that ownership, you know, we're working through and exploring how that also isn't helping.

Erika Nordfelt [02:54:11] Creating differentiation. Each of you are both not only like, is your sexuality for you, you're responsible for it. You're not responsible for either people. So, I mean, I'm not giving you a simple answer. It's a complex conversation. But I sometimes get actually really excited to be like, awesome, let's. Let's do this. So sit down. I'm gonna be talking for a while. I usually don't talk as much in sessions. I want them to, but with this type of stuff, I want to give a whole lot of sex education, sexual health concepts. I want to discuss what sexual shame is or shame in general, so they can continue to reassess and reevaluate what this means to them.

Erika Nordfelt [02:54:49] Also look at it a little bit differently. So that's some of my approaches. It used to be this is going back with more maybe addiction model styles. Addiction model would pathologize of like any of that behavior is problematic, any of it. Even if you're just looking like, once a month. Well, I don't know. Clinically, is that really that problematic?

Erika Nordfelt [02:55:12] Each individual can define what that looks like themselves, but they can't define that unless they've done more of that values work or that really checking in with, like, who am I really? Who do I really want to be and show up in this moment and what decisions can I make from there versus, you know, like, I'm just an addict and I can't handle it, or I can just do whatever I want. And that's what feels like my values are like, that's not what I'm talking about.

Erika Nordfelt [02:55:36] So, like, the addiction model not only pathologizes normal sexual interests and behaviors and different ways, it can even showing up in a couple. Like, we need to. If we can strip down any shame or. Or diagnosis or anything and just look at things more authentically, then we can reevaluate, like, what works for you and what doesn't work for you as an individual or as a couple. What agreements are you making as a couple, and then you can move from that space. The addiction model also focuses too much on sobriety.

Erika Nordfelt [02:56:08] Like, we're supposed to be sober from this, or at least we're supposed to decrease the behavior. And outside of Mormonism, maybe there's some room for that to actually decrease suffering and struggle within Mormonism, like, sobriety is zero again. And we've discussed how that doesn't actually decrease distress. For my clinical approach, that is my goal to decrease distress. It isn't because that's the impetus of so much of the suffering.

Margi Dehlin [02:56:36] Right.

Erika Nordfelt [02:56:37] So, yeah, the long winded answer is, I think that's often parts of the approach. Some, like, I've got a client right now where we can really link a lot of his behavior to trauma. And so we're doing trauma work. And yes, it links into that, but I'm not focusing, actually. I have zero interest in decreasing the behavior, but I do want to heal that trauma. So we're doing different type of trauma approaches so that he can either get to a place where he's comfortable with the behavior that's already happening or make different decisions about it or whatever. You know, maybe it. Nothing happens around the behavior.

Erika Nordfelt [02:57:13] It's tough because he's also still a very devout person and he's stuck as much as he's trying. And he's been doing a really good job of, like, trying to expand his mind as far as, like, how he sees sexual health concepts. It's hard in that Mormon box. You can still only go so far within those walls and you can't break out of it so freely. I think there are some people, I mean, I've even heard of them on Mormon stories where they are pretty good at being like, this is what I believe and this is what I don't. And I can still come to church.

Erika Nordfelt [02:57:40] And I love that for them. I think people can make those type of decisions in around sexual shame. The difficulty in that is sometimes then they can't have a temple recommend if that is maybe something they want. Or they have to be dishonest. And that also might not feel like who they want to be. So there are some real consequences.

John Dehlin [02:58:03] Or they hit the bishop lottery.

Erika Nordfelt [02:58:05] Yes, exactly. Which sometimes is aces all around. And they do gray or not at all.

John Dehlin [02:58:13] Or it works for a time and then it doesn't work when bishop changes.

Erika Nordfelt [02:58:16] So I'll be honest, in the years I've had, probably, at least with this specifically, I'd say eight plus years of experience working with individuals and couples, there still isn't a great perfect formula. Like, it's chunky and it's complicated, which makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:31] Really. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [02:58:32] But there are better ways. And of course, we're working on decreasing the shame anyways, regardless of what happens with the behavior. But I'm far better at, I think, a lot of these skills than I was earlier on.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:58:46] I will just say, personally, as someone who's had his own journey and who's had a journey with Margi, and I think I've said this before on Mormon stories, but for me, one of the most miraculous events that occurred was when I, you know, between the time I started, you know, experimenting with masturbation and images, and the time that I just disclosed to Margi that I did that stuff sometimes, which was probably a period of 20 years, I would say started in 95.

John Dehlin [02:59:27] And we probably talked. We probably talked around 2012. It was just a constant increase of me just going into that shame cycle of feeling bad about it, but doing it and then feeling worse about it and then trying to stop it, but then being obsessed about it and doing it more. It was like this constant increase of behavior that I was not happy with with myself.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] And again, I don't know how much of that's just developmental libido. That's the one piece. I don't know for sure because it was never okay before the point that I talked to Margi and just disclosed thinking it was going to end our marriage.

John Dehlin [03:00:11] I sometimes look at pornography and. Or masturbate. But one of the most powerful, impactful experiences that happened was when I told her that, and after she managed her emotions, collected her emotions, she said, I don't care. I love you anyway. I can tell you that that for sure was the pinnacle of my problematic behavior as a Mormon would describe it. And literally from that point, it's been a decline of me even having interest in pornography and. Or of masturbation. And again, I don't know how much of that is being in your 40s and early 50s. I still think of myself as very much having a libido.

John Dehlin [03:00:57] I don't think of myself as having slowed down. But I can say in. In 2025, as a 55 year old, I have zero interest in porn right now. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying for me it's now been years where I'm just not curious, I'm not interested. It's not something that I even.

Erika Nordfelt [03:01:20] It's not stimulating anymore.

John Dehlin [03:01:21] No, it lost its. I explored all the things I wanted to explore and it just. Just doesn't do it for me. But being with Margi does it for me. And that never went away. So it was this boogeyman that if I had just been allowed to look at it and explore it and normalize it and then sort of like have my day with that sort of exploration, I think it would have just kind of naturally gone away. But the miracle was the disclosure and the unconditional love and then just kind of getting it out of my system.

Margi Dehlin [03:01:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:02:00] But I never. I never thought that day would come, but it came.

Erika Nordfelt [03:02:03] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:02:04] Which doesn't that tie into shame research quite a bit? Some of what he's talking about?

Erika Nordfelt [03:02:09] When you feel accepted no matter what, or there's something to confirm your value in the midst of your disbelief in that. Like, that can be a really healing thing. And whether it turns into zero use or decrease in use, that actually happens a lot. When there is somewhat a turning point, whether it's with themselves or with a partner of like, it's actually okay, you're okay, I love you anyways. You know, some people maybe have that experience with God or they do have it with a partner, that there can be this.

Margi Dehlin [03:02:37] This.

Erika Nordfelt [03:02:38] Yeah, yeah. This incredibly healing effect which is sometimes shows up a lot in a decrease of behavior. I think for us there was probably aspects of that as well as, like, I don't care anymore, do whatever you want. It's on you. And I genuinely no longer demonize it.

Margi Dehlin [03:02:53] That's right.

Erika Nordfelt [03:02:54] Like you can make Your choices. I can make my choices. You look, you don't. You masturbate. You don't. I look. I don't. You know, like, we are able to hold space for that as part of our maybe sexual identity and interest without it being damaging. And, of course, we're still assessing that. If it were to be, you know, out of control, are there aspects that are really hurting us as a couple? That's a different situation, but it's not. And so the compulsivity element decreases with that, too, Right?

Margi Dehlin [03:03:23] Absolutely. I do see that as the.

Erika Nordfelt [03:03:27] It made me think of something, though, when you're explaining that, John, it's fascinating. I've seen, I would say, different flavors of sexual shame that can show up, because I've had some clients that it's like, regardless of. Of their partnership, because maybe they're married. So regardless of their relationship, whether with someone by their self, like, the shame is heaping. They really just feel like they're worthless no matter what. And then there's others that it's more so because they're actually in a partnership.

Erika Nordfelt [03:03:55] Not that they maybe don't feel shame, but the shame more is, like, of how is my partner gonna feel versus, like, I'm inherently worthless. And in some aspects, that showed up for Brady, which, again, was a gift because he was able to reconcile this idea of, like, I maybe don't feel like this behavior makes me evil or deviant, but I still am worried about hurting Erica. So there was still a lingering effect of shame and fear in our relationship contracts, but he was actually able to decrease and, like, do a lot of shame. Resilience. Skilled just internally on his own, which, like, this is amazing.

Erika Nordfelt [03:04:33] People can't always navigate that. And then there's some that can, I think, when they really tap into, like, who am I again? What feels right for me, what feels wrong? They're doing that significant work and not easy work of, like, really assessing who they are at their core.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:47] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:04:47] That they might be able to make those decisions, but when those decisions are in conflict with an agreement within a relationship, it's still difficult. So when I'm coming into this and I'm like, I don't care anymore. Genuinely. And you're okay. It's like, all right.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:02] Absolutely.

Erika Nordfelt [03:05:03] We're good.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:04] Absolutely. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:05:06] I love that. And for us, that's how it's played out. Like, it has not been a stress or tension point for years, which is remarkable because it was for years. You know, there was a turning point, and it became. It's completely in the Past, which is massive.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:21] That is. Yeah, that is some good healing work.

Erika Nordfelt [03:05:25] Yeah, yeah. And I think I've heard this actually I think I've heard this from Natasha. The level of how damaging that shame is is a different form of sexual abuse or trauma. It's not the same type of sexual trauma we see when you know someone's being wounded by another, but it is as damaging. And again there can even be the same type of, type of reactions that we would see in a classic sexual assault situation or just PTSD in general. Like there is real trauma that comes from this deep rooted sexual shame.

Margi Dehlin [03:05:58] That's right, yeah. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:06:00] That's why it's, it's such an important conversation to like. I guess that's another reason why I'm wanting like I'm wanting to shift the conversation for anyone that's listening so that they can feel like there is hope. You do not have to feel that shame so deeply.

Margi Dehlin [03:06:14] That's right, yeah. So beautiful.

Non-Monogamy, Post-Mormon Sexuality, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [03:06:21] This might seem like a tiny bit of a curve ball to Margi, but it's ubiquitous enough now that I just want to ask you your experience. Don't know how much I've talked about it on Mormon stories, but for many secular folk and certainly for a lot of people who leave Mormonism going beyond self, sexuality and sexuality in a dyad, it occurs to a lot of couples sometimes the idea of non monogamy, of exploring sexual relationships outside still in a marriage, but maybe opening up. Do you have any strong opinions or cautions or biases against or have you even seen that or, or learned about it? So do you want to speak to that at all?

Erika Nordfelt [03:07:10] It's funny. I'll speak to that on several levels. The first one actually isn't answering it at all, but I think it's funny and I want someone to do some research of like when people leave there's like other check boxes that kind of hit that. It's like okay, we're trying alcohol, we're getting piercings, we're getting tattoos, we're trying psychedelics and maybe we're exploring non monogamy. That there's common trends. Whether that's right or wrong, I'm not commenting on that but it's a thing and I've even done these things. I have a nose ring, I have a tattoo. Like you know, there's something liberating of like I actually get to re explore or now we're re experiencing somewhat the freedom that we should have had in our adolescence or in those younger adult years.

Erika Nordfelt [03:07:46] And so now that we have that freedom. I do think some people maybe are interested in non monogamy for those reasons. Like, and I've even experienced this to some degree that it's like not at all am I holding my that against my husband. But it's like I never probably will ever have a sexual experience with another person based on the agreements that we had and the life that I've lived. Like that's an experience that a lot of people can be really useful to their sexual development and won't have.

Erika Nordfelt [03:08:13] So I just think that's funny. I want to see a research study. I'm like what are these checkboxes? As far as my experience it is limited. So I'll be pretty transparent with that. The more I have worked about it, it's is more in the queer demographic than it is in the post Mormon. Even though those are huge demographics I work a lot with.

Erika Nordfelt [03:08:32] And I think the queer demographic maybe has its own characteristics that are far more just open minded on how they define sexuality at large. So that's also going to show up in relationship orientation and stuff like that. My caution is I guess there'd be two. If that is something that people are exploring to really slow down and assess their reasonings because there can be some from my experience where I see people that they are so quickly to run through what's the new next thing that I can do without intention. So if we're slowing down and we're using intention, it's not my place to say if that's right or wrong for anyone. But it can be compelling to do things just because now there's freedom to

John Dehlin [03:09:18] do things and sometimes because you're reacting to the opposite of what of how you were raised.

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:23] Yes, exactly.

John Dehlin [03:09:24] And you're mad at the church.

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:09:25] And if the church said one way you want to try the other way,

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:28] there's a pendulum swinging that happens a lot of like I felt this way about anything and now I'm going to swing and I'm going to feel this way and that's not better swing.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] No pun intended.

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:37] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [03:09:37] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:38] So but for those that do trust try in the little experience that I have, communication is huge. Communication and agreements.

John Dehlin [03:09:48] Consent.

Erika Nordfelt [03:09:50] Yes. You have to make sure there is all of those. I mean those are sexual health concepts. Consent. Making sure there isn't any exploitation. Like a lot, a lot, a lot of communication is what sets it up for a more positive experience. But outside of that there's risk. And so people have to assume that Risk. Risk as well. I think the difficulty is in when Maybe not both partners are on the same page with that agreement that it's like, okay, I'm agreeing to this for you, but I maybe am not really interested in that, but I want to be supportive. And that's more likely to go sideways because there's maybe going to be resentment or jealousy or those type of emotions that just by nature make relationships difficult.

John Dehlin [03:10:31] And I'll just add that I've seen quite a bit that even if both are eventually on the same page, things sometimes move in unexpected directions where one who was consenting ends up regretting. And sometimes it's the man unexpectedly that was early most interested in exploration that ends up regretting that he pushed it. I've seen that quite a bit, actually.

Erika Nordfelt [03:10:57] So for those that want more information, I'm not the expert on that. There is not a lot, you know,

John Dehlin [03:11:01] if we're going back, there's not a lot of data.

Erika Nordfelt [03:11:03] There's not a lot of data, there's not a lot of training, like psychology's ever evolving. And I think the more we go along, there's even more fields to learn about. And that's one of them.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:13] And don't you think, I mean, from what I can see, post Mormonism and doing non monogamy is very different, say for someone who grew up secular, where there wasn't a lot of sexual shame, where there wasn't a lot of. Or they could explore in a normative way. To me it just feels like.

John Dehlin [03:11:32] Or hyper patriarchy.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:34] Yeah, it's like its own little bubble to study.

Erika Nordfelt [03:11:38] So I think that goes back to what I'm saying before you have to make sure you're not moving from your own trauma. You know, anytime we're making a decision that is somewhat moving from anxiety or trauma, that's going to be problematic. So if, like I'm thinking of these big relationship changes and if I'm really digging, it's. Yeah, it's because I felt oppressed from patriarchy or whatever. Like, is that really a good relationship decision for you? Just keep exploring. You know, I encourage slowing down and doing your own work, not jumping into things too quickly because that's maybe a common trend that it's like, okay, we're taking away the script and anything goes.

Erika Nordfelt [03:12:14] And they have not modeled responsible examples of any of those things. People drink responsibly, actually all over the place, 100% and they can do all sorts of responsible things. But we've taken away the script. You don't have any models of what that is. And so it's easy to Kind of go all in. So I.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:33] Not only that, but sometimes don't you think we are still. It's that cognitive and then fully lived experience. Right. Where we can have moved on. We could think we're done, we're done with Mormonism. We don't believe that anymore.

Erika Nordfelt [03:12:46] Right.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:47] I don't believe alcohol is bad. But the truth is we still have this scarcity, this whole scarcity mentality of conditioning for decades, many of us right when we come to that place. And also honestly, not a lot of emotional regulation, a lot of emotional like awareness. And sometimes I think what would you say to that? That unique kind of setup?

Erika Nordfelt [03:13:13] I think that as well as just lack of experience.

Margi Dehlin [03:13:16] Yes.

Erika Nordfelt [03:13:17] You know, we're talking about my lack of experiences in my sexual development. Like there's some people where substances are far more really we're going with the addiction model in more of a clinical sense. Addictive. And they have a tendency to have more compel, like compulsive dysregulated behaviors around substance use. They don't know that. You know, they haven't had logs of experience in that. And so that's also working against them. But with the emotional regulation piece too, Like I think that's going back to the whole idea of like slowing down. Like we're not moving from rash places. We're not moving also from overly energized or emotional places when we're doing that.

Erika Nordfelt [03:13:54] This is brain chemistry. Like that's from the part of our brain that's the feeling brain that is. Is trying to protect us and keep us safe, which serves us sometimes and usually just makes us irrational and worried and scared. And so regular brings us more into our prefrontal cortex. We can actually make wise, more logical and ideally value based decisions.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:18] Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:14:19] Emotional regulation is huge. I mean that's something I talk about with every single client.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:23] That's right, yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:14:25] Because you know, with that the argument could also be said that there are all sorts of other behaviors that can be out of control.

John Dehlin [03:14:31] Yeah, sugar and.

Erika Nordfelt [03:14:32] Yeah, sugar. Gambling, like all sorts of things.

John Dehlin [03:14:35] So social media. Right.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:37] It's all kind of attempts to cope with difficult emotions.

Erika Nordfelt [03:14:43] Right. And anything that we're using that's self medicating, that's like this is what soothes my anxiety. Again, that's problematic. There's huge psychology in that. So that's going back to like slow yourself down.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:56] Yeah, exactly.

Erika Nordfelt [03:14:57] You know, if you are going to try something, start slow. You know, don't go for a full psychedelic trip initially because maybe that Is too much or with cannabis, like, I don't know. There's lots of schools of thoughts on that. And I don't find myself in any one camp, but I do find myself in the middle of kind of both camps with caution. Like, and I.

John Dehlin [03:15:17] That's all I'm saying.

Erika Nordfelt [03:15:18] Yeah. And I go back to the same script of, like, do your own work to find out who you are.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:22] Yeah.

Erika Nordfelt [03:15:23] And what. Not only what feels right for you, but what feels like an appropriate pace for you. Because, yes. With that pendulum swinging. And I felt it for sure that it's like freedom. The world.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:36] The world is new.

Erika Nordfelt [03:15:38] And luckily, I really didn't do anything that didn't turn into behavior. But there was that compelling idea of, like, all right, well, now what? And it turned into nothing. We're just going home and we're going to bed. But for some, that can turn into behaviors and compulsions. And so. But really, I don't think this is outside of any other kind of mental health concepts of good ways to navigate our life. It's just a unique subset of a life experience.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:07] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:16:08] Brilliant.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:08] That makes sense.

John Dehlin [03:16:10] All right. Well, Margi, any final questions for Erica?

Margi Dehlin [03:16:13] Was there anything that you wanted to express that you feel like maybe you didn't get to.

Erika Nordfelt [03:16:19] Well, I'll share just a little story only because I think it may be. Is helpful. I wrote a book, and I think it's helpful for people actually on this side. It was something I wrote again, linking mental health concepts to church doctrine. And it took me several years to write it. And I was finished writing it, and then the editing process was for a little bit, like, set was its own process. And I was deconstructing over the editing process.

Erika Nordfelt [03:16:47] And so at that time, I was like, oh, I don't know if I can represent this book as well, because now I feel like a different person. And the content was very, very Mormony. And so I asked my editors, you know, can I reorganize some of this information? I want to make. Make it a little bit more generalized for any type of spiritual practice or Christians or non Christians.

Erika Nordfelt [03:17:10] And they were very agreeable to let me do that. But now I think it has a lot of good concepts that maybe aren't uniquely different than not. You know, there's so many great books out there. But it does, I think, have, you know, if people find themselves leaving religion and they're like, now what? It might have some skills or tools that not only are very compatible with mental health, but just spirituality at large. Like how how to move forward again from that integrity based space.

Erika Nordfelt [03:17:37] I don't necessarily. Of course, when I originally wrote it, I was like, okay, I'm marketing this towards all the Mormons. But now that's not my space anymore. So I continue to wonder, who is this book for? Sometimes I feel like it could be useful for deconstruction or what is next ideas of that. Not that it's all its own new doctrine. It's mental health concepts, it's emotional regulation, it's meditation or even just mindfulness in general. It's got a lot of those. But sometimes it's tying into how that can show up for us spiritually. So that's, that's a resource.

John Dehlin [03:18:11] Did you want to name the book?

Erika Nordfelt [03:18:13] Yeah, it's called Don't Walk Alone. It's on Amazon and on Cedar Fort Publishing. They're the publisher, which. They're a very LDS company.

John Dehlin [03:18:23] That's cool you got published by them.

Erika Nordfelt [03:18:24] Well, it was cool. And it's also cool that they're being flexible enough. Like I don't necessarily fit probably the author demographic that is their majority.

John Dehlin [03:18:32] Maybe they might change their mind after this.

Erika Nordfelt [03:18:34] No, maybe they will. And that's okay.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:36] It's okay.

Erika Nordfelt [03:18:36] I really feel like I have like abandoned any attachment to the outcomes of that book. So I really only suggest it if people find themselves being like, ah. Cause it's very common to be like, okay, I've taken away this religious script.

Margi Dehlin [03:18:50] Now what.

Erika Nordfelt [03:18:51] What does that mean for me spiritually? What does that mean for me emotionally? Like, that is a wild ride. And this maybe isn't a complete answer, but it could be pieces of that as well as just, yeah, good coping skills.

Current Work, Resources, and Farewell

Margi Dehlin [03:19:04] Great.

John Dehlin [03:19:04] And if people in the Rexburg area want to reach out to you or your clinic, how do they do it?

Erika Nordfelt [03:19:09] Yes. So we're called Greenstone Counseling. We're actually in Rexburg and pocatello. We have two different offices. So greenstonecounseling.com is our office. We have seven clinicians and all of them work with faith deconstruction. All of them work with LGBTQ as well as, as all sorts of other things. We do see a lot of trauma. I feel like we're very trauma focused. But, you know, when you're a trauma therapist, everything's trauma. So that's, that's a bit part of our brand. But it's also serving like these more marginalized populations in our area. We also are trying to start a faith transitions group, which has been hard to figure out how to.

Erika Nordfelt [03:19:48] Like, I need to pick Natasha's brain or maybe your guys's brain later on, how to do that successfully. Um, because I know that there's people, but it's been hard to get them together. Anyways, on our website, there's also a group that we're trying to start in February for specifically faith. We'll say journeys. You know, we're saying the word faith transition. I know that doesn't fit for everybody because maybe they're still in, but they're questioning or whatever. We want to create a safe space for anyone that is not, you know. Yeah, that's in that faith curiosity or exploration or deconstruction.

John Dehlin [03:20:19] So is there an email?

Erika Nordfelt [03:20:20] People ship greenstonecounselingmail.com so we try to keep it really simple. So.com is our website. Gmail is our email. Our number is there. You know, they can email any questions they want there too, as well as, like, yeah, just call us. They want to try to get onto anyone's calendar. I am not accepting clients right now, which is a hard thing. It's a good thing to have a whole client load, but it's also hard because you sometimes can only reach so much, which is another reason why it's so meaningful to be on here. Like, I only touch one client at a time. And this helps at least spread better awareness and knowledge for people on a bigger scale. But we do have other clinicians. We're pretty picky with who we hire because we want to make sure they fit our demographic. So everyone's competent in a lot of those areas.

Margi Dehlin [03:21:10] That's great to know. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:13] Well, Erica Nortefeld, we really appreciate your vulnerability and your willingness to share for free your expertise, your experiences, your relationship. And I say that to your partner as well because that's something y', all, I'm sure, decided together. And so thank you for coming on Mormon Stories. Thanks for being vulnerable. Thanks for sharing your life story, your Mormon story, your ex Mormon story, and thanks for trying to be a healer in the community, both to you and your husband because we need more healers. Every therapist or coach I know has a full load.

Erika Nordfelt [03:21:47] Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a lot of work.

John Dehlin [03:21:49] There's a lot of work to do, so thank you.

Erika Nordfelt [03:21:51] Likewise. It's been a pleasure. You guys are so fun. It's also cute no one can see this, but they like little bit holding hands the whole time. John and Margi are adorable. So I'm even bigger fans now that I've met you guys in person.

John Dehlin [03:22:05] That's all it takes is holding hands. Yes. That's it.

Margi Dehlin [03:22:07] That's it.

Erika Nordfelt [03:22:07] That's the one thing you have to do.

John Dehlin [03:22:10] All right, Erica, well, thanks so much. Good luck. Stay in touch. And Margi, thanks for being our partner here.

Margi Dehlin [03:22:17] Absolutely. Really such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:22:20] Yeah. And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast. Of course. We couldn't do this without our donors, so thank you. If you're a recurring donor, we couldn't do it without you. If you value this content and want to see it continue, all you gotta do is go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor, and for as long as we have donors, we'll keep doing this. We have started to do some ads on YouTube and Spotify. We're trying to make them not too frequent and spaced out and placed in a way to where they're not annoying to you. Just know that the ad revenue we get is a critical part of what keeps us in business.

John Dehlin [03:22:59] If we didn't have the ad revenue, we literally would have to lay people off. That's where we are right now. So if the ads annoy you, if you're not a donor, I don't think you have any business being annoyed by the ads in any real world aware sense. But if you are a donor and you're a little bit bothered by the ads, we just want to thank you for your patience with that because is it's literally allowing us to do more things, provide more services, help more people. So thanks for your patience with the ads, but also thanks for your support as donors. And please donate even though we do ads because if the donations dried up, we would have to close shop, honestly.

John Dehlin [03:23:41] So. But there are other ways you could support us as well. Subscribing on YouTube, subscribing on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Wherever you find our show, liking these episodes, commenting on them, sharing them with others, that's all super valuable as well. We always are looking for new people to interview. So we've got an application process now. You go to mormorestories.org, hit the apply button, Apply to be on the show. You'll record a three minute video and fill out a form and then that's how the process begins. We can't accept everybody, but we're always reviewing applications. Every week Margaret and I are reviewing applications and trying to match the needs of our audience with the people who reach out to be on the show.

John Dehlin [03:24:29] So please apply and then we always love your feedback. You can email us@mormonstoriesmail.com or you can fill out a feedback form on the website as well. Or you can comment on any of these episodes. And we do see the comments. So thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.

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