Post Mormon Family Therapy

(This is not about me. It is a modified excerpt from Second Anointing a novel about Porter Wight.)

I’d studied books on religion, and slowly began doubting Mormonism years ago. The control exerted over me for decades pushed me into counseling—therapy tracking dozens of sessions, going through my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, focusing mostly on the guilt felt over the years.  The candy I’d shoplifted, taking extra ice-cream from the freezer, the little lies I told, sneaking into the theater, watching movies I shouldn’t, the confessions with my dad the bishop.  We worked up to  guilt over teen fantasies, desires to masturbate, the guilt about sex and saving myself for marriage. We spent sessions on guilt about not working hard enough in the mission, missing tithing payments, skipping church, delaying having kids or not having more kids, as the church taught we should.  Adulthood guilt about looking down on gays, on non-Mormons, on people with body piercings, tattoos, who drank or smoked or cursed.  The list piled high.

Then one session, the therapist asked, “Have you ever heard of religious scrupulosity?”  I shook my head. 

“It’s a fairly new disorder characterized by pathological guilt on moral and religious issues. It can result in dysfunction, OCD, extreme anxieties and more.  The LDS Church compounds this with another element: ego-elevation.”

“What?”

“It's a double bind put on members--you're special, but you're sinful. On the one hand, as a life-long believing Mormon, you’re told from your earliest years that you are the most special spirit saved for the latter days. That you’re part of a strange, peculiar and wonderfully distinct group of people. That your world view is the only true one and that it will save the world in the end.  You receive special patriarchal blessings telling you how wonderful you are, and how uniquely blessed your life will be.  That Mormons have a special position in the world, to go out and find everyone else special.  Mormons feel empowered, even narcissistic at times, by these kind of repeated extoling.”

The therapist said truth, more or less. I felt regret over my former beliefs.

“On the other hand, you are given guilt over the smallest things. Alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea.  No nudity, no masturbation, no petting or unmarried sex.  Avoid tattoos, body piercing, dancing too close. Don’t question your leaders. Don’t talk about sex, even within your marriage. Shun doubters, shun gays, keep secrets.”

It eerily reminded me of what I had heard all my life.

“The double bind—the saint and sinner pinnacle—creates instability that the organization controls.  Your imbalance becomes their grip on you.  Many truly believing Mormons teeter between these two extremes—the special feelings and the intense guilt—on edge of anxieties and depression.  Their scrupulosity creates dysfunction, but their superiority allows them to avoid complete breakdown.”
         
Anxieties hovered in my life. I never could do enough.  The church had mapped my life: baptism, priesthood, mission, marriage, kids and college, career and more kids, couple mission and retirement. They never felt like my choices.  I’d traded away my life for seeing God.

“What intrigues me,” the therapist continued, “is that something happened to you.  Something pushed you off the tip away from shame, down the side of narcissism, toward a mild psychopathy.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Something released you from your guilt and imbalanced this unstable pinnacle Mormonism placed you on.”

I knew what had done it.  The Second Anointing I’d received at the hands of an apostle.

“Do you know the DMSV criteria for psychopathy?” the therapist asked.  We sat together, the man with his graying hair and crossed legs on a padded folding chair.  I sat on another padded chair behind the table, my hands cuffed loosely to the underside hook.

“Not really.”  I said.

“The criteria include glibness, grandiose sense of worth, lying, manipulation, lack of remorse, lack of empathy, no demonstrable emotions, failure to accept responsibility.”

I shrugged.

“Were you taught as a young Mormon boy that you were special?”

“Yeah, of course.  My parents loved me. At church, they told us we were the chosen generation. We would rise to preach salvation to all the world and make ready for Christ’s return.”

The therapist nodded.  He asked about the Mormon teaching that one can become a god in the afterlife.  I told him it was no secret. I didn’t tell him that I’d received the Second Anointing which granted godhood. 

“How did your parents and church make you special? Did it justify lying or breaking the law?” The question sounded loaded to me.  His plea required me to admit wrong.  Justified or not, I couldn’t tell the therapist how the church put me up on a pedestal, and then put my family in the jury box. 

I said, “As a missionary, we were told not to talk about certain subjects to non-members. We were supposed to avoid polygamy, doctrines about becoming gods, the temple oaths and penalties.  If someone asked, we were told to pretend ignorance or to testify of something else.”

“So they encouraged you to avoid and lie?”

“It’s complicated.”

The therapist nodded. He asked me about how justifying lies squared up with being saved.  I told him apostles--lawyers--bishops-- muddy it up, and it gets complicated.  I thought about how many lawyers worked at the top of LDS Church leadership.  The Apostles surely lied for their own purposes.  I’d had seen prophets wink at congregations over misleading the press on church history and events.

“All your life the church taught that non-Mormons would go to hell, right?”

“No.  There’s no hell for non-members.”

The therapist nodded. “Ah, yes, I remember. The non-believers go to a lower heaven, not hell.”

Only the most faithful believers who deny God and his spirit end up in outer darkness. I wouldn’t explain; the man wouldn’t understand.  The therapist went on the usual bent about mom and dad. Did they neglect me? No. Did my dad spend a lot of time at work, at the bar, at church?  My dad had served as bishop and then stake president for almost twenty years. I didn’t see my father that much.  I reassured the therapist that my mother had cared for me.

“Your mother and your church.  The church is so important to you.  It molded your early views; it harnessed your time and activity after school; it taught you right from wrong and gave you a sense of great worth. It taught you that you were a god in embryo and that it had the path to greatness.”

All true. “Yes.”

“And the church constantly reminded you about obedience to it.  You were special, but only if you obeyed.”  I didn’t respond.  “Why then, would you attack your church?”

I sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“We have time.”

There was no way to explain it.  A Mormon therapist would reject it.  A non-Mormon couldn’t comprehend.

Inner contemplation reveals the manipulation of other systems and persons.