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Exmormon Foundation Conference 2013: Micah McAllister - Exit Strategy: Leaving Mormonism with your Dignity and Integrity Intact

IntroductionI left the church in mid-2008 and found myself at my first ex-Mormon conference 5 years ago.  That conference stirred my enthusiasm for this community such that I started the social network Life After Mormonism.net for anyone leaving the church to find community and support in their transition out of the church.  I became very active in the online forums and became aware of the common themes and challenges almost all of us face in leaving the church.  About a year ago I started creating a guide of all the most common issues we face during our exit and how to navigate them.  I formally completed that guide in May of this year under the name "Exit Strategy" and released the guide online and in digital format for Amazon Kindle enabled devices.  This presentation contains the essence of what I tried to accomplish with my book, but in a more focused format.  The most common and constant challenge we face in leaving the church is in our relationships with still believing members: our spouse, family, friends or acquaintances.  For my day job, I'm a technical analyst or problem solver.  To really resolve a problem, you have to identify the root cause or source of the issue.  Only by resolving the root source will the issue permanently change for the better.  In our relationships with others, we are half of the equation.  Though we only own our half of what we bring into our relationships, that half can make or break that relationship for better or for worse.  But there is an even more important relationship in the mix that determines what our half of the relationship brings to the table: Our relationship with our selves.  Our relationship with others will reflect the health of our relationship with our self.  To present the best opportunities for healthy relationships with others, we must first create and heal a healthy relationship with our selves.In this presentation we will explore how our identity comes about through our relationship with ourselves, how that identity creates our filters and affects our world view, how Mormonism intervened with our relationship with self, and then how we go about restoring and healing our relationship with ourselves to alter our worldview, create healthier filters and better relationships with everyone else.  I will also touch on deconversion efforts and how to bypass the filters and defenses that keep people stuck in illusion.  What I share with you today is up to you to put to the test and verify whether it works for you or not.  There isn't a singular path to leaving and healing from the church, and so the opportunity is yours to experience and heal yourself through whatever means you find works for you.  My desire for all people to find peace, joy, and love in their relationships with themselves and with others may affect my emotions later on in this presentation.  I apologize in advance for any flashbacks of fast and testimony meetings I may cause.  I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeves when touching upon subjects that are dear and meaningful to me.  Please don't interpret my emotions as evidence for anything other than my having a personal experience with my body's response to thought-input.  As further disclaimer, I share this presentation as my own opinions interpreted through my language-filters, understanding, and experience with reality. Relationship with SelfLets get into relationships with self.  Relationship with self may be a new concept to some of you.  It's certainly not a concept emphasized in Mormonism all that much.  Your relationship with self is in many ways just like a relationship you have with someone externally, such as a friend or spouse, but instead involves how you talk to yourself between the conscious-mind (your thoughts), and the semi-conscious imaginary identity created of yourself (who you think you are), along with other conscious and subconscious aspects.  Your self, or who you think you are, is the identity made up from all of the combined beliefs you currently maintain internally.  Your identity is multifaceted and contains all of the beliefs of who you think you are.  Who you think you are to your parents, your siblings, your boss, your spouse, your children and society in general.  Your identity is also completely imaginary, made up, like a dream.  It doesn't have to match objective reality due to the very filters created by our identities.  We create our identity consciously and subconsciously through our relationship with our self.  A simplified version of how this happens is as follows:  <slide> A thought about ourselves enters our conscious thinking.  That thought is then filtered through our past collective of experience, knowledge and understandings.  Emotional response to the thought also influences our evaluation and can tilt the scales one way or the other despite observable evidence or the truthfulness of the thought.  If our filters find sufficient validity to the thought, then an agreement is reached with this thought being true of ourselves.  Once agreed upon, this thought now becomes a belief about ourselves.  This thought-turned belief now gets adopted into our identity of self.  In other words, your OS just got a micro-update.  If no agreement is found with the thought, it is dismissed and we go about our merry way.  This is of course done rather casually in our heads and not even something we are always conscious of happening.  There are also various levels of how deeply we internalize and adopt this belief into our core identity.  The more internalized the belief, the greater the emotional and defensive response when triggered.  We may also consider and dismiss the same thought many times before something sticks and we start agreeing with it, and then creating a belief and adding it to our sense of identity through internalization.  The more we repeat a particular thought to oursevles, the more likely we are to start agreeing with it, and once we've agreed with it, the belief has formed.  It doesn't even matter if that particular belief is true about us from a 3rd person perspective.  Subconscious programming happens much this same way through suggesting ideas repeatedly, along with emotional reasoning and perceived evidence, such that without sufficient awareness, we have given others the ability to program ourselves.  These internalized identity beliefs act like references or tapes that we replay in our heads when we're faced with an event or thought that arises to challenge our programming in daily life.  Our identity, which is the sum of our beliefs, creates the filters through which we interpret new thoughts, information and the world around us.   It is for this reason that your relationship and beliefs about yourself are the most important and fundamental relationship you'll ever have with anyone, and also the only relationship that will persist throughout your whole life.  The quality of your relationship with self reflects in your relationships with others.  The beauty of this relationship imperative is that it returns your focus to the real place of empowerment and control, your own self.  We can begin to understand our relationship struggles when we look at how Mormonism intervened with our relationship with self.Mormonism's influence on relationship with SelfPerhaps the most pernicious of Mormon beliefs that we internalize into our identity of self is that of the natural man being an enemy to God.  This belief reinforces that we are inherently evil as we are, as we were born and created, and that our natural instincts, urges and desires are at odds with who we should be and who God wants us to be.  We are then enemies of our selves, our own stumbling block for who we are told we should be.  We are then conditioned to heap judgment, guilt and shame upon ourselves as we fail time and again to resist the "natural man" and struggle to become something that we aren't.  The better an individual is at self-shaming, the more devastating the results of these misguided beliefs.  And when self-shaming isn't enough for failing to meet expectations, and when the so called "sin" is great enough, public embarrassment is added in spades through confession, revoking of the sacrament, dis-fellowship, or ultimately expulsion via excommunication.  All of the above creates an inner-dialog of how worthless we are, how sinful our nature, how weak, how ugly, and a world of other self-shaming, guilt inducing failures that leave us basically hating who or what we've been conditioned to believe and think that we are.  Since most of the worst sins surround natural urges and instincts, this cycle of indulgence, shaming, and repentance has little end or hope in sight and literally leads many of us into states of depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders.  Besides all of the ways we Mormons are conditioned to heap on guilt and shame, we also lacked any teachings that would actually help create healthy internal dialog, strengthening a healthy relationship with ourselves.The only teaching or commandment that comes close to telling us to love ourselves is Jesus talking about the 2nd great commandment to "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt 22:39).  But the love towards self is rarely expanded upon or even mentioned further.  All focus seems to be on what you can instead do to show love to others and to God: service, missions, callings, home teaching, visiting teaching, and another endless list of expectations, and subsequently, another list of failures, guilt, shame or embarrassment.  There's nothing wrong with a genuine desire or effort to serve others, but whenever that service becomes a detriment to yourself or your well-being, it has been taken too far and will begin to both hurt yourself, and trickle down to those relying on your ability to serve them.  So Mormonism is detrimental to your relationship with self on two fronts: First, it creates endless ways to self-loath, and 2nd, it lacks any real empowering self-relationship advice.  Any self-empowerment advice that does sneak through general conference or sacrament talks seem to come from philosophy outside of Mormonism, but is immediately overpowered when the next speaker arises, or you return to studying church curriculum.  Leaving Mormonism doesn't result in an automatic healing of your relationship with self, but it does remove you from the environment that was doing the most harm to that relationship, and leaves you open to self-discovery and self-acceptance, which can be the beginning of your ultimate and most profound healing.  Western society in general also has a lot of hang-ups with relationship to self, having other methods of self-depreciation, competing and otherwise promoting an ever persistent feeling of lack, or of not being enough.Restoring your relationship with SelfRestoring and healing your relationship with yourself is the key to improving your relationships with all others.  You cannot fully give to others what you don't have yourself.  Love cannot come from an empty well, neither can respect be established if none is had for yourself.  The good news is that you have more control and influence in your relationship with yourself than you do in any other relationships you may have.  Healing your relationship with yourself is true self-empowerment, and also where your influence and control begins and extends from.  By restoring a healthy relationship with yourself you take your power back from others who would manipulate you, program you or otherwise take advantage.  Healing your relationship with self puts you back in the drivers seat of your life and you begin to live life on your terms, instead of how others would have you live.  That doesn't mean you'll turn into a narcissist or a hedonist.  But you will begin to seek out that which is for your greatest good, and respectfully allow anything else to distance itself or fade away completely.Observing and controlling your thoughts is where the healing of your relationship with self begins.  Some internalized beliefs from Mormonism fall away quickly once the precedent upon which they were established is no longer accepted.  Other beliefs will take a more conscious effort of evaluation, observation, and replacement with new beliefs.  Healing occurs as the old belief tapes fade away and are replaced with new beliefs that provide a real foundation for healthy relationships with self and others.  Focusing on the beliefs you want to create and have for yourself is more constructive than focusing on what you want to avoid or undue.  Once the new beliefs begin to take root, the old incompatible beliefs will begin to whither and disappear. Releasing the old Programming<Slide>When negative, undesirable thoughts or programming crops up unexpectedly, it is important to respond to it in such a way that it is neither repressed, nor reinforced.  Non-judgment is key in preventing a downward spiral by feeling bad, guilty or inadequate at these resurfacing patterns.  Patience with yourself is also essential.  Healing takes time and it is likely that you will face these old patterns from time to time.  When any such undesirable thoughts, beliefs or programming surfaces, consciously acknowledge them by simply being aware that they surfaced, and that you know they are echoes from the past.  Repeat to yourself that you no longer agree with that belief, and then you can reaffirm the positive belief to replace it with.  Also take note of whether anything triggered the pattern and if so, what that trigger was.  Knowing the trigger can help you avoid or anticipate the pattern being triggered, and provided further awareness of choosing a healthier response.  If appropriate, devise how you'd rather respond when that pattern shows up, and then begin replacing the old pattern with new thoughts, action or inaction.  Be gentle and patient as it may require many attempts before the pattern fades completely or the new desired response becomes automatic.Creating New Beliefs About Self <Slide>New beliefs should be selected and worded carefully, and then repeated to yourself in your head and/or out loud at regular intervals to begin the process of conscious self-programming.  Keeping a written log of the beliefs you are striving to establish will help remember and track your progress.  You can also post reminders or written beliefs were you are likely to see them during your daily routine, such as the on bathroom mirror or refrigerator.  Working with a few, focused beliefs at a time can help you avoid feeling overwhelmed, as when trying to reprogram many new beliefs simultaneously.  You may not feel the validity or the benefit of the beliefs when you first start playing them in your head.  The old unhealthy beliefs were not establish in a day, nor will the new beliefs make their mark immediately.  A couple weeks of repeating the new beliefs daily should get you on your way to establishing and internalizing them to the point of real belief and feeling better about yourself.  Even after the new beliefs are established, like the old beliefs, they can be turned to and replayed anytime the need arises to remember or reestablish your self-worth.  Beliefs that provide the greatest foundation for healthy relationships are established upon the following attributes<Slide>:LoveRespectHonestyTrustOwnershipGratitudeFriendship Love for Self <Slide>Let's dig into these attributes and how you might employ them in your thoughts to create beliefs that heal your relationship with yourself and reprogram the old thinking patterns.  Love is perhaps the most powerful and most sought after sentiment humans crave.  The lack of love is also perhaps the most devastating starvation experienced after the lack of food, water or air, as well as being the cause of many more social ills.  Unconditional love communicates self-worth, appreciation and warmth regardless of the status of the one receiving it.  Whether you currently feel loved or worthy of love, love for self is perhaps one of the most worthwhile gifts you can give yourself.  There is no one in the world more deserving of your love than you yourself are.  You can love yourself in thought, words and action, just as you would towards a friend or lover.  A simple expression of love towards your self is as follows: "I love and accept myself unconditionally just as I am".  You can also expand your expressions to include things you love about yourself, or want to love about yourself.  The surest way in the world to experience love is to be-in-love with yourself.  When love is present, its companions compassion, patience and forgiveness are not far behind.  As you go forward in expressing love for yourself, the amount of love you experience and feel will grow and fill some of the deepest needs within your being.Respect for Self <Slide>Respect for self is a recognition that you are an equal with everyone around you.  Self-respect is also expressed through thought, words and actions.  When you respect yourself, you establish your value as a human-being who is worthy of being treated fairly and with dignity, as you treat yourself fairly and with dignity.  Respect yourself as a unique individual with needs, wants and dreams of your own, that are valid and worthy of pursuing and obtaining.  Respect that your life-path is your own, and that no one else will ever quite understand your path as well as you do.  You can express respect to yourself in a number of ways similar to the following: "I respect myself as a unique individual, with equal rights to pursue my happiness, wants, and needs".  Self-respect recognizes that your needs must also be met from time to time instead of being secondary to what others would demand of you.  Also, respect for self means not believing the lies we tell ourselves about how wounded we are, incapable we are, how unworthy, unloved or other harmful beliefs that do nothing for our self-confidence or well being.  Those beliefs are what keep us in abusive or unhealthy relationships because we identify with our suffering and unworthiness in such a way that we feel like we deserve to continue suffering, or that we aren't worthy of real love or happiness.  For the most part, we only tolerate as much abuse from others as we heap upon ourselves.  As you increase and restore self-respect, you will establish and maintain boundaries, and no longer tolerate abuses.Honest with Self <Slide>Gentle honesty with self is your reality check.  Lying to yourself hurts no one more than yourself, keeping you trapped in expired paradigms, patterns, false beliefs, unhealthy living conditions, and other mental or physical traps that block you from going a new direction that would serve you better.  Gentle honesty looks at reality as it appears before you in simple, clear terms, with no judgmental language clouding your vision.  You see yourself from a 3rd party perspective full of compassion, and make evaluations of your circumstances in terms of what is working for you and what is not, what is healthy or unhealthy, helpful or harmful, positive or negative.  You throw judgment to the side and avoid thinking in terms of good or bad, right or wrong, righteous or evil, and the many other labels we use to reinforce one bias or another.  "I am honest with myself because I am worthy of hearing my truth and taking care of myself" is one example of creating honesty with your self.  Your honesty helps you become aware of what triggers unexpected emotional changes in your mood and thinking patterns.  Those triggers represent a past emotional wound that is yet unhealed, and unresolved.  Being honest about those triggers and your default reaction to them can help move you towards forgiveness, self-love, and new behavior in place of the programmed response.  Gentle honesty with your self recognizes that reality is not black and white, but shades of gray mixed with a rainbow of options at your disposal to explore what works for you, where your passions come alive, and where you want to go and be in life.Forgiveness to SelfWe all go through life and make mistakes at times.  Even when we do our best with the information we have at hand we can still error.  We also carry emotional wounds from those mistakes, and from the hurts others have inflicted upon us.  It's important that we express compassion for ourselves through the self-loving gift of forgiveness.  "I forgive myself for the mistakes of the past", is a loving expression that frees yourself from the anger, regret or resentment that holding on to past mistakes imprisons you with.  You can be as specific as needed in forgiving yourself for the wounds we carry and have allowed to be carried for so long.  Forgiveness is a virtual letting go.  You literally let go of the events, wounds and emotions that have caused so much suffering.  Forgiveness is the healers balm to dress your emotional wounds from the past until only the surface scars of memory remain, and your emotional health restored.  Forgive yourself for not knowing what could have saved you from the pain or suffering at the time you didn't know better.  Forgiveness may not come all at once, but as you continue to grow in love and compassion, it comes easier and heals more fully.  Practice forgiveness on small emotional wounds first and continue to every wound you encounter, big or small. You will know when you are fully healed as the triggers that used to stir your emotions no longer have an affect on you.  You have released them fully as you live in compassion and love with yourself and the world around you.  Unconditional love now flows ever more naturally when you have forgiven yourself and no longer feel a need to suffer or loath yourself for past mistakes or hurts.  You can demonstrate patience and compassion by being gentle with yourself as you transition and grow, while still experiencing some of the echoes from the past.Trust your Self <Slide>Trusting yourself is another important aspect of healing your relationship with self.  It can be difficult to trust yourself when looking back at all the times you may have lead yourself down difficult paths or made decisions you later regretted.  It helps to remind yourself that hindsight is 20/20, whereas at the time you were navigating those decisions, you had less experience and knowledge than you now have, and likely did the best you could with the information you had, along with the beliefs and biases held at that time.  Trust that you are even now doing the best you can with what you now know and have in front of you.  All we can do is our best, and our best is not a constant.  We have up days and down days, and that is an acceptable aspect of the flux of life.  Restore trust by basing decisions off of the measurable risks and benefits, rather than the irrational emotions of desire, fear and judgment.  Trust your abilities in those areas where you are skilled.  Trust that decisions aren't always black and white, and more than one alternative may work out in the end.  "I trust myself to do the best I can as I follow what makes sense to my own logic and reason".  Restoring trust with yourself will help restore confidence and allow you to move forward in the best way you know how.  Mistakes are opportunities for learning and not to be feared.  Remember that your unique individual self has its own logic, reason and understanding, and only you can choose to live in a way that honors your self and creates the fulfillment and happiness that you desire.Ownership of Self <Slide>Ownership is key to self-empowerment and restoring you to a place of decision and control.  When you own something, you take responsibility for what becomes of it.  You recognize any part you played in the decisions and events throughout your life and take responsibility for those parts.  Ownership and responsibility place you as the ultimate force for action and decision in your life.  The opposite of ownership is victim-identity.  Victim-identity renders the feeling of life being too cruel or too hard to be worth much effort of overcoming or moving on to things you may really want in life.  You identify with life being something that happens to you, rather than life being something you have some influence over.  Indecision, doubt, fear and hopelessness are the companions of victim-identity.  To be clear, the actions and decisions of others do have very real influence over our lives and can injure or traumatize us in very real ways with definite consequences, and out of no fault or control of our own.  Ownership and responsibility don't dismiss those very real hurts.  Instead they determine to not let those hurts define you.  You don't take ownership for what others have done to you.  Instead you restore your power to choose and act now, and move forward rather than remaining trapped by your past.  Own how your words, actions and decisions can influence others to hurt or to lift them.  Own your triumphs along with your mistakes.  Owning your mistakes means making efforts to learn from them, and as necessary, apologize or make resitution.  Ownership embodies strength, courage, integrity and resolve.  Ownership embodies love, whereas dismissal embodies fear.  "I own and take responsibility for my life as I do the best I can with the knowledge and understanding I have.  I own my mistakes as I learn from them and take what I have learned to go forward with more resolve."  Ownership is also owning your own feelings, emotions and happiness.  You don't look to others to make you happy or fulfill you.  You don't hold your happiness contingent of others meeting your expectations or joining you on the same life path.  That is what Mormonism embodies, to constantly challenge and hold your happiness hostage to everyone joining the same perfect vision of families forever.  That is letting others have power over your happiness.  Take responsibility for your happiness and own what thoughts you allow to occupy your mind and influence your emotions.  Ownership will help you restore confidence, honor, and empowerment in your life.  Life will become more what you can do with it, than what life does to you.Gratitude for Self <Slide>Gratitude can be a quick way of altering your life-perspective, and bring about optimism and appreciation.  Even when there may not appear to be much of anything to be grateful about, a little gratitude goes a long way and can be found even in the simplest or humblest of circumstances.  To begin with, your body is a remarkable, evolutionary driven, biological and biochemical machine.  There is no one else in the world who gets to experience the unique sensations, talents, needs, thoughts, opinions, and tastes of your individual body.  Express gratitude and appreciation for your body, all parts of your body.  Even the perceived flaws, scars, and battle wounds add to your uniqueness and perspectives that are yours alone to share with the world.  Be grateful for the capacity of your lungs and the beating of your heart.  Be grateful for your health, regardless of how it is measured.  "I am grateful for my body and the vehicle it provides for my journey through the wonder of reality, and the experience of life".  Having a sentiment of gratitude expands your awareness of ever more things to be grateful for in your life.   Be your own best friend <Slide>Establishing the attributes of love, respect, honesty, forgiveness, trust, ownership and gratitude with yourself brings you full circle to being a true friend to yourself, the best kind of friend.  You love yourself just as you are.  You respect your individuality and free-expression.  Your gentle-honesty keeps you in check with reality and where you want to be in life.  You trust yourself in doing the best you can with what you have.  Further, you own up to your decisions and actions, demonstrating integrity and honor.  As your friend, you laugh with yourself from the funny stories and commentary in your head.  You listen when you are hurting, and are gentle and caring when down, sick, or struggling.  You don't judge yourself, and instead offer empathy and understanding.  Forgiveness comes naturally and love flows freely.  There is no one in the world who can be a more constant and available friend to yourself like you can.  Even loneliness can be mitigated at times when you like the person you are alone with.  Your sentiments of gratitude for your body and self lift you and humble you for what you have experienced.  Be your own best friend through the way you talk to yourself, listen to yourself, and otherwise take care of yourself.Boundaries, Triggers, and Emotional Wounds <Slide>Our boundaries measure two things about ourselves, but they aren't necessarily related: First, our level of self-respect, and second, our unresolved emotional wounds.  Self-respect stems from love and acknowledging that we are an individual worthy of equal treatment and as such, will not tolerate abuses or attempts at others taking advantage of us.  In other words, we love ourselves enough to seek relationships with others who also love and respect us, and avoid relationships with those who continually project their own lack of love and respect by attempting to control or hurt us.Our unresolved emotional wounds represent the other boundaries we experience due to those wounds being touched or triggered, which can happen intentionally or unintentionally through our own thoughts and actions, or those of others.  We can establish boundaries to avoid those wounds being trampled on and triggered unnecessarily, but we can also use those boundaries or triggers to consciously work on healing those wounds.  We heal them through recognizing the event or thought that created the wound as no longer true, as no longer present in this moment, and then through forgiving ourselves and others, we restore unconditional love.  We are then only left with the scar or memory of it, but no longer bound by the emotional hurt or trigger.  As those emotional wounds fully heal, the protective boundary eventually becomes unnecessary and will no longer trigger an emotional response if crossed.  We instead continue in self-love and self-respect, seeking and maintaining those relationships that are for our greatest good. <Slide> Another key understanding of ourselves is that thoughts create emotions.  What we think about can have a strong affect about how we feel, or what we are feeling.  The real converting power of Mormonism is provided by the contrived emotional response which is then used as evidence for truth, or the influence of the Spirit.  The emotions then become a positive feedback loop, or circular logic.  The seemingly happy story by the missionaries creates happy emotions.  Those happy emotions then stir further thoughts about the emotions and what they mean, in other words, that what they are feeling suggests that what they are hearing is true.  When spelled out like this, it seems absurd that people can be so easily mislead by stories that don't necessarily have any resemblance with unbiased reality.  In leaving the church and becoming aware of this fact of thoughts creating emotions, we regain power both over being mislead by future encounters with emotional-reasoning, and also in choosing our thoughts carefully so as to avoid unnecessarily stirring emotions that could influence our behavior in undesirable ways.Relationships with others <blank slide>Restoring a health relationship with yourself prepares you to re-establish and have healthier relationships with others.  Since we can only really change ourselves, and only have limited ability to influence change in others, our focus and concern then is assuring we bring the best of ourselves into any relationship.  While we cannot change others, changing yourself has a rather remarkable influence at inviting change in others, more so than if our focus was solely at directly changing others.  There are no guarantees however.  But lets get into how bringing a healthy-relationship-with-self provides the best opportunities for healthy relationships with others.Mormon MindsetLet's review the Mormon mindset again to recap what our challenge is:  When our own paradigm has shifted after discovering the real problems in Mormonism, we can easily forget the mindset we just evolved from and then we may run into difficulties depending on how we come out of the proverbial closet of doubt, or try to share with others what we discovered for ourselves.  The challenge is that Mormons hold their beliefs right there with their identity, or even as their identity.  Anything that challenges their faith in the church then comes across as a personal attack and up go the defenses.  Mormons also identify with extended-families-forever which becomes threatened merely by your own disaffection from the faith.  These all combine to create a fragile environment for approaching loved ones about your leaving or about the challenges to the church's claims.  Often our strongest inclination after discovering the truth for ourselves is to share it with others, to want to free others from the now debunked belief system.  For the most part, unless others show an open-mindedness to new information, or other cracks in their own belief system, sharing too much, too soon will only serve to hinder your relationship with them, and even serve to solidify their anchors in the church.  Relationships with believers will usually become challenging if we maintain an ulterior motive and effort to directly challenge their faith.  For those relationships that you wish to maintain or restore, a more gentle, equitable approach is required. Healthy relationships are established upon similar or mutual attributes of respect, trust, honesty and friendship.  While we can't guarantee that others will bring those same attributes into the relationship, embodying them ourselves assures that at least half of the relationship is established on that foundation.  That can often be enough to engender similar sentiment in others.  However, the unfortunate possibility for some relationships is that the other party may never cease to be toxic in their lack of respect, honesty or decent behavior.  You may have to decide how much those people add or take away from your enjoyment of life, and then limit or cutoff time spent with or around them.  Fortunately, more often than not, others will make an effort to match what you bring into the relationship.  Now we'll explore some of the attributes of an individual who is firmly grounded in a healthy relationship with self, and why that is crucial in relationships with others.  Decide for yourself if this sounds like someone you would like to be around, or emulate yourself.Healed IndividualsIndividuals who have restored a healthy relationship with self are perhaps one of the freest, down to earth people you will meet.  The self-respect they engender flows out and respects the life and free-will in everyone they happen upon.  Their love is unreserved, and unconditional.  Because they judge not their own self, they give little to no thought about how they are judged, freeing themselves from the world of manipulation and hurt.  Insults and judgments just roll off their backs.  They recognize that those insults and judgments reflect the hurt and projections from the originating person, and says more about them than anything about themselves.  In other words, they don't take insults or judgments personally to be about them, because they know it's really about what the source individual is feeling.  They also don't allow others to continue to disrespect boundaries they maintain for themselves, and politely make it known when others have touched or crossed those boundaries.  Forgiveness also comes quickly, both to themselves and others, recognizing that they are freeing themselves from the emotional wounds that hold them back from moving forward.  They honor the individuality of others such that you can be your complete self around them.  You can share any secret with these individuals and they will neither cast judgment, nor reveal your secrets to others.  Because they look for and encourage the best in themselves, they will also look for and encourage the best you have to offer, but with no expectations or demands.  You will only feel their encouragement to seek your own individual path and ambitions in life, and interject none of their own.  They will help you explore and consider all your options, looking at the risks and benefits, even if that is not a path they would choose for themselves.  They are true to themselves, and walk their talk the best they can, and in turn encourage you to be true to yourself.  They recognize that their path is uniquely their own, and that everyone has the right to choose and navigate the path of their choice.  They own their past and recognize that it was the path that gave them the strength and experience to become who they are today.  They apologize for their mistakes when those mistakes affect others, and they do their best to restore what was lost.  They also allow you to own your feelings, actions, and decisions, recognizing that you each can only own your half of the relationship.  Their patience comes from the wisdom that everything heals and happens in its own timeframe.  They are in no rush to get to tomorrow while still living and navigating the journey of today.  Your boundaries are respected if known, and information you may be unprepared to process will also not be shared uninvited.  They aren't without flaws, but in their journey through life, they try to mitigate them and minimize harm or hurt to others from their words, actions or decisions.Now, does that sound like an individual you'd like to hang out with?  More importantly, does that sound like someone you would like to emulate?  Healing and restoring a healthy relationship with yourself is practically at the root of everything when it comes to healing and restoring your relationship with the world around you.  This is the essence of "Becoming the change you want to see in the world", as Gandhi well understood and embodied himself.  When you heal your relationship with yourself, you'll interact with your still believing family and friends from that center, through the new filters of love, respect, forgiveness, honesty, trust, ownership, gratitude and friendship.  Because you love and accept yourself just as you are right now, you will also find it easier to love your still believing spouse, family, and friends just as they are as their Mormon-selves.  You may not agree with their choice of religion, but your happiness is no longer held hostage to whether they leave religion with you.  Your happiness instead stems from both your own healthy foundation and center of self-love and acceptance, and rejoices in the happiness of others, regardless of how they come upon it.  When your nephew gets all excited for his baptism at 8 years old, you'll find you can be happy because he is happy.  You may recognize the road of where that baptism will take your nephew, but you respect that it is his road to choose and grow from.  Further, by creating a relationship and space of love and non-judgment, you may just find yourself being the first person that nephew seeks out when he discovers he has same-gender attraction, and shares with you about his first kiss with another boy.  He may worry about you thinking he is gross, because that is what his religion has taught him, but he will likely feel safe enough to tell you anyway.  When you reassure him he is not gross, he will feel a burden lift from his shoulders and have a sense that everything will be alright for him.From a healed relationship with self perspective, your respect and ownership for your self protects you from taking on the emotions and blame others will try to dump on you.  When your still believing spouse tries to guilt you for destroying their eternal marriage, you can respond with compassion for the loss they feel, and also assertively from the perspective of not being responsible for what they feel, recognizing their past programming by the church as causing that anguish, and the responsibility being theirs to manage it.  You can help by reassuring them you still love them, and haven't changed fundamentally as a person, except becoming more open-minded and accepting etc.  When you are sure in your own relationship with self, you recognize that the hurt others may try to cause in you is a reflection of the very real hurt they are experiencing, and also that only they themselves can do something about how they feel in the end.  Being compassionate and accepting of them despite how nasty they may become towards you provides a space where they are invited to heal and even own up to some of what they are experiencing.  You will also protect yourself by distancing yourself as needed so as to not be dragged down or hurt by them unnecessarily.The relationship itself becomes the focus and priority when approached from the perspective of your own healed relationship.  If the relationship is worth preserving, the boundaries and free-will of the other party will be respected and so create a safe space for them around you.  We don't get to choose the boundaries other people establish for themselves, nor do we choose what information will or won't be sensitive to them.  Even when boundaries aren't known, with a little awareness we can detect when they have been crossed.  Defensiveness, dismissal, denial, rising emotions, tensions, shutting down or walking away all display some level of discomfort of a boundary being crossed.  It's of little use to keep pushing the topic once triggering another's defenses, plus you'll increase the risk of harming the relationship.  On the other hand, if they feel safe around you, they will be themselves and talk about their lives in the church as though you were still one of them.  This does not need to be met in disgust by you when you recognize that is the life they value and choose to live.  When they are in your home, you can also establish how you would like them to respect you in your zone.Thoughts on Deconversion <Reliationship Slide>Our first instinct when wanting to alert others to the truth about Mormonism is to show them all of the most damaging facts from Mormon origins and history.  The fallacy with that is forgetting that as Mormons ourselves we become defensive and closed when our Mormon-identity is challenged by opposing information.  We also forget that Mormons use emotional reasoning to uphold their testimony, which can rarely be challenged by facts or observable evidence.  Only if they are already doubting and looking for answers does this approach really work.  If they are not open and doubting already, pursuing this approach will certainly hurt your relationships with your family and friends, if not end the relationship altogether.When you are on the path of becoming a self-loving, self-accepting and self-respecting individual, you present the best of yourself and carry with you knowledge and experience about personal identity that can help others awaken to their own self-worth.  By showing and teaching unconditional love, respect, and acceptance through example or through open invitation, you can bypass the filters that keep out identity-challenging Mormon facts, and appeal straight to their core identity.  If you can cause a shift in their perception of themselves, in their core identity, engendering self love, acceptance, forgiveness, respect etc, their filters will also begin to erode.  You have to do this without interjecting your own wants or dreams for them.  Also, to spare yourself disappointment, it is best to not hold any expectations on the outcome either.  Your focus is on being your true loving, respecting and accepting self around them to create a space where they can learn to adopt those attributes for themselves.  You can help by identifying to them how others disrespect or take advantage of us when we don't have enough love and respect for ourselves.  Eventually this may also allow them to feel safe enough to come to you when their own doubts become loud enough.  Help them see themselves through the same unconditional love and acceptance that you have engendered for yourself as you continually strive to heal and maintain your healthy relationship with self.  Only if they show interest or share doubts do you lead them to the drinking fountain of Mormon origins to choose for themselves whether to indulge.  You can also share with them your beliefs or understandings that paint a different view of reality that doesn't directly challenge Mormonism, but offers food for thought.  Otherwise continue to be a safe place for them to be themselves with you and live their lives as they choose.The following story demonstrates how a shift in personal-core-identity can remove the filters enough to have people doubting the church in one day.  Though these accounts are perhaps the exception more than the norm, they can offer hope and examples of how to shock the core identity enough to erode the defensive filters.  Over the past few months I have been involved with the deconversion of a bishop, his wife, and 3 youngest kids.  I first contact this bishop when I was trying to help him accept his bisexual daughter who was in a lesbian relationship at the time and was really struggling with her self-esteem, wanting to be accepted by her father in her relationship.  This bishop proved to be one of the most hardcore Mormons I've ever encountered in the strict raising of his family, demand for his respect as the patriarch of his family, and in his demands for strict obedience to his rule and to gospel principles.  His daughter coming out as bisexual wasn't enough to shift either his or his wife's core-identities in the Church, and a couple months passed before the blow that would rock his world.  In September I started mentoring his youngest son of 15 years old because of behavior problems at home, school and in his studies.  After a couple weeks of helping this son and his mom turn his behavior around, he opened up to me and told me he kissed a boy.  I asked him, "did you like it?"  He said yes, but then suggested I probably thought he was gross.  I assured him he is not gross and that he is a beautiful person just as he is.  That completely lifted his mood and returned him to the happy kid he hadn't been for the past couple years.  The next morning he asked for my help in coming out to his mom, you see, he wanted to have his new boyfriend over to hang out.  I carefully questioned his mom in an email to get an understanding of where her feelings were in regards to LGBTs.  When she responded positively, her son asked me to go ahead and let her know he was gay, as he was too nervous.  She read my email, and then went to her son's room, hugged him, and told him she still loved him.  She took him out to lunch and reconnected with her son for perhaps the first time in years.  Later that day she emailed me back that she was ready to leave the church, and even her husband over her son being gay.  Her son being gay was the shift in her identity she needed to throw off the imaginary filters and fully admit the church hurts LGBTs.  Dad's shift would require a much more dramatic shock to open his eyes.  The next day Mom asked me to probe her husband to see how he would likely respond to his son being gay.  His responses to me showed he was no where near ready to accept neither his bisexual daughter, nor his son being gay.  After sharing this with mom she reaffirmed she would leave the church and her husband if necessary, and that she and her boy would tell dad together that evening.  I emailed the bishop one more time to let him know he was about to have his world come crumbling down and that I hope he would truly contemplate who and what he loved most before responding.  That evening he emailed me a single phrase: " wow...damn your were not kidding at all".  His wife and son had just told him that his son was gay, and that she was leaving the church, and that he could be alone all weekend to think about where his loyalties are.  His wife leaving the church and potentially leaving him was the shock he required to have his core-identity rocked enough to realize how the church was dividing his family.  He had some beers that very weekend and skipped church, letting his counselors know he wouldn't be presiding that Sunday.  The following week he watched the Sunday sessions of General Conference and was already seeing through the illusion enough to become verbally upset.  He has since stepped down from the Bishopric and his family is doing much better.  This family left without reading any Mormon truth information because it was their core-identity that shifted first, and once you see through the facade, why the church isn't true becomes mostly irrelevant.My own exit from the church came about in similar fashion.  I never read anything disproving the church, and wasn't even looking to doubt the church.  I read my scriptures daily, prayed, paid my tithing and believed fully up until the day I left.  What I was reading though deprogrammed myself unintentionally and unsuspectingly.  My core-identity shifted from merely reading alternative philosophy and spirituality that I originally thought supported my testimony in the church, but was fundamentally mind altering enough that one day my church-identity crumbled and I lost my testimony, my garments, and regained my power over mind and thought in a single day.  I never went back for the second interview for my temple recommend I was in the middle of renewing.  If you really want to try bring your family or spouse out of the church, focus on their core-identity and bypass the filters that trigger their defenses.  Be a Trojan horse.Final remarksTo recap and conclude: The window through which you see the world is created through your identity and relationship with self.  We project on others what we see and feel for ourselves.  To create the best opportunities for healthy relationships with others, we must first begin to have a healthier relationship with our selves.  As we restore a healthy relationship with our selves, we will begin to heal our emotional wounds to create a self-loving and accepting identity of ourselves, and then be able to see the world through new lenses, taking a much healthier self into our relationships with everyone we interact with.  You will further allow others to feel safe around you to open up and be their own selves.  The most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with your self.  Having a conscious, loving relationship with yourself, being aware of your thoughts and how they affect your emotions, identity and interactions with the outside reality, is the enlightened, self-mastery state that the avatars and gurus of history have touched upon.  Awareness of your relationship with self enhances free-will, and allows you to choose your reactions instead of acting out subconsciously from past programming.  There is no greater freedom than mastery of self.  In the name of Cheese and Rice, Ramen.<end-slide>See More