Episode Script
(Note: the final episode will not follow the script verbatim, but it will be pretty close. )
Introduction
[Music: The South]
Welcome to the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father.
When I was a younger dad, my wife and I were thinking about what our family culture should be like. We thought it would be good to set an atmosphere where all of us would be allowed to experience the full spectrum of human emotion.
Well, I don’t know how good of a job I’ve done at that. In fact, I joke with my kids that there are three times a man can cry in his life: when his mom dies, when his dog dies, and when his team wins the superbowl. Well, I don’t have a dog and I don’t watch much football.
Joking aside, in this episode of the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast, I’m going to talk about my experience with learning about emotions. I’ll share what led my wife to say: “I just wish you’d be honest with me.” And I’ll share with you how I learned what she meant by that.
This is the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father. Stay tuned.
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[Song: The New Black]
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Part 1: Predictable Chapters of Life
This is the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father.
[Music: A United Nation]
When I was a kid and a young man. I think I was maybe a little naive.
I mentioned in my last episode, that my life seemed to just follow a set path that kind of took care of itself. You progress from class to class and school to school. You fulfill the requirements and choose electives you might like. And things go pretty well.
You obviously have to put in the work. Like I would do my homework, study for tests like school tests, and the ACT, and then the Bar Exam. And things would just work out well enough.
And things that didn’t pan out so well, there was always an emotional escape valve. This took the form of the next semester, or the next school, the next mission transfer, or the next phase of life. So if things didn’t seem to be going all too well, there was always a reset around the corner, so it wasn’t too big of a deal.
Here’s an example of that from my mission:
[music cue: Band Camp]
When I arrived in my first area, my mission president issued a challenge to all the missionaries. During the upcoming fast Sunday, which was a few days later, we were to pray and ask God for the number of people out there we were going to baptize over the remainder of our missions. I thought, “Cool, I can do that.”
The fast Sunday came. Before we left for dinner, we took the challenge. I remember kneeling down at my bed with a blank letter to the mission president.
And I prayed.
As I did so, I thought about how when I was set apart as a missionary by the Stake Presidency at home, I was blessed that I would find, teach, and baptize Filipino people in the Seattle area (I’m half-Filipino). So I remember thinking, Filipinos can have large families, and if I tap into a community of Filipinos – maybe even in each area I go to – that could be quite a lot of baptisms.
So I came up with a number, wrote it down on the paper, and sent it off.
237. That was my number.
No one ever said anything to me about it. But at the end of that transfer, about six weeks later, I got a copy of my mission’s newsletter. The newsletter had inspirational messages from the mission president and other missionaries, and included mission facts like who certified as teachers, leadership changes, and how many baptisms the mission had that year and the goal.
Well, the goal of the whole mission that year was something like 4 baptisms per missionary. And I just written my mission president that I was going to basically get 118 baptisms a year. So when I saw that, I was like, “Well, I guess God is God of miracles.”
When my mission ended, I didn’t even get close. I didn’t even help convert any Filipinos at all. And I felt like I worked pretty diligently and tried to keep the rules.
I didn’t get why that happened, and I still don’t. But for whatever reason, I didn’t find it all that emotionally jarring. Strange, yes. Some weird anomaly, also yes. But not a big deal.
I moved on pretty quickly. I had exciting stuff to get to like college and getting married. And, while it would have been cool to find all those Filipinos that were supposedly out there, ultimately, it doesn’t really impact my life. I would move on with my life either way.
So I moved on. It didn’t impact my faith. And I went forward feeling pretty optimistic about the next chapter of my life.
Part 2: Reaching the Unknown Chapters
[Music: A United Nation]
But as I mentioned in my last episode, as life progressed and I finished school, I kind of ran out of chapters in my book of life. I had reached the landmarks of getting married, starting a family, finishing post-graduate education, and entering a career. The next chapters of life, which I viewed as retirement and then, I guess…death…, seemed extremely far away.
But also in my naive little mind, I felt I had really checked all the boxes you are supposed to check to “live after the manner of happiness” and I believed that following this Godly path would bless you with prosperity as you followed Him. I thought these blessings of sustenance and happiness would flow unto me without compulsory means – that I would wax confident before God, the doctrine would distill upon me like dew, and so on and so forth.
So I sincerely followed this covenant path as best I knew how… It’s not that I was Peter Priesthood. I was at best a 33% home teacher. And I had my fair share of follies. But it was genuinely important to me to try to be at one with God through the at-one-ment – believe it or not.
And I remember after I graduated from law school and passed the bar, I expected that this manner of happiness and the prosperity would roll in. I remember the day the bar results were published, I sat in my office looking at the phone. I truly expected it to ring.
[Music ends]
[ring]
“Hey, Fickle Father! I just saw the bar results and that you’ve made it. No surprise there. Hey! You were always such a spiritual giant! The lord has impressed upon me that I should have you represent my company. Where can I send a large retainer check?”
But that phone call never came.
Instead, I got a different call.
[ring]
“Mr. Fickle, this is your law school. We noticed that you missed your last loan payment. We’ve gone ahead and alerted the credit bureaus, but we’re going to need you to go ahead and submit that payment right away, mmm kay?”
And then my firm got this call:
[ring ring]
“Mr. Fickle’s firm, this is your biggest client by far, the housing crash of 2008 finally caught up to us and we’re going to have to go ahead and file for bankruptcy, sorry but we can’t pay any of your invoices from the last 6 months so maybe you can just go ahead and forget about those, mmm kay?”
So this was not the way I expected things to go.
When I would experience these types of setbacks, I didn’t have to just wait out the semester or hold on until a new mission transfer. I didn’t have that next milestone of life that would kind of reset things. As I said, the next milestone I saw was retirement and death, and those seemed pretty far away.
You just had to find a way to grind through it.
And I did that.
Part 3: Taking Action
I starting my own practice and had some success at it. But even then, challenges arose and I began trying to find the path again. The path God had for me.
And I felt God was opening certain doors for us. These doors allow me to sell my practice and take a corporate job where I could have a good salary without the stress of running a business.
[Music: The South]
So we took an in-house job in Washington and I moved my family again.
And it was, like Idaho, pretty picturesque. We moved to a house on a little lake. My kids could fish, kayak, and explore to their heart’s content. Or better yet, they could have a great view for video gaming. My work hours became very manageable. I was around more.
It was an odd time because things were going well – Intellectually I could step back and say, “We have a reasonable amount of prosperity that we are blessed to be able to finance.” But I still felt like I was missing that manner of happiness.
I had many moments of happiness for sure. But I always understood that living the Gospel is supposed to bring lasting happiness – a state of happiness – not the fleeting happiness that the world bringeth, which was the happiness I figured I was experiencing. And I knew it must be fleeting, worldly happiness because I would always end up back in my “normal” emotional state, which mostly felt “blah” or “muted” or at all times slightly overwhelmed on top of an underlying current of anger that would surface probably a little too often in the form of griping at people about whatever.
So I would always end up in this unsatisfying state of normal.
Part 4: “I Just Wish You’d Be Honest with Me”
Internally, I’m thinking that I tricked myself yet again. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; but fool me over and over, what does that say? I guess that there’s a serious issue somewhere.
My wife could sense that there was a problem – not that it would have been that hard – and she wanted to understand it. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that at the time, she just wanted me to do what I needed to do to not be that way.
Or maybe even more accurately put, she did not want to add anything to my plate that would make me more that way.
This was a period where we were side-by-side, but we weren’t necessarily together.
We were more trying to co-exist than being one.
We were friends while still keeping some distance.
We were like Pam & Jim in season 9 of The Office where the main reason you keep watching is because you remember how great the show used to be and you keep thinking that maybe the next episode will be better.
Anyway, you get the picture.
We were just, in some ways that neither of us really understood, disconnected. We tried to talk about it and figure it out, but it just didn’t seem to happen.
And that’s when one day my wife came to me and said, “I just wish that you’d be honest with me.”
And I didn’t even know what she meant by that. I thought I was being honest. But I could sense the desperation in her voice and see it on her face.
I knew I had to figure this one out.
You’re listening to the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father. Stay tuned.
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[Song: Dream Team]
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Part 6: Wrestling with the Question
This is the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father.
[Music: The South]
Just to recap where we are in this story. My family and I are now in Washington. I’m working an in-house corporate job where I have more time so I’m around more. Things look like they’re going well on the surface, but my “normal” setting is slightly overwhelmed just by life with an undercurrent of anger. And that’s when my wife said, “I wish you would just be honest with me.”
When my wife told me that, I did the same thing I always did. I basically shut down while I worked on processing and articulating my thoughts. In my view, I had to actually sort through my thoughts until I could share them honestly.
Sometimes this took me a few hours and sometimes it took a few days or being pretty much shut down.
In this case, it was a longer one.
It took about three days as I decided I would share with her, for really the first time in concrete terms, that I was struggling with my feelings about the church and the extent of the struggle.
The Letter to my Wife
So I wrote out all my thoughts in a letter.
Finally, I told her I was ready and we went out to the world’s best ice cream place – Dairy Queen – and I gave her the letter, which basically covered all the stuff you’ve heard in this podcast so far.
The rock-in-the-hat
Issues with the Pearl of Great Price
False confirmations from the holy ghost
My feelings of abandonment and being left on my own
Concerns about testimony and so on
She read it and was like, “Thanks for sharing. That’s really nice, but I kind of already gathered all of this. It’s really nice to see it all together, but it’s not surprising.”
And, I’m like, “Okay, great.”
And I wasn’t totally sure where that left us, but my summary would be something like this.
I’d ask, “So now we’re on the same page?”
And she says something like, “I don’t know. That’s not really what I meant about being honest with me. It is to a point, but I want to know, like, what you’re actually thinking.”
“For example,” She says, “Where did you go when you were writing all this?”
But my brain wouldn’t get what she’s asking. It would think, “What do you mean? I was obviously working through all of those thoughts so I could put them into an easily digestible essay form! … I’m really not sure what else I’m supposed to be telling you?”
But I didn’t actually say any of that.
I’m sure I said something like, “Okay.”
And that would be an honest answer, technically. I just didn’t get what she was asking for. And I don’t think she really did either. It was like an itch you can’t find where to scratch for both of us.
The Book “When Religion Hurts You”
As I was trying to figure out more about how the brain works and why I feel like mine doesn’t, I was scrolling through my local online library catalog. That’s when I came across an audiobook entitled “When Religion Hurts You” by Dr. Laura Anderson.
I figured I’d give it a listen.
And I’m glad I did because the book was basically about me.
[Music: Swag on]
Dr. Anderson’s premise is that some religious cultures can cause lasting trauma that builds up in the body. The antidote is developing skills to manage the way our minds and bodies process this trauma.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in any of this stuff, but I want to share five concepts that blew my mind and have really helped me understand myself better…
- Trauma is just a description of how your nervous system or body reacts to a particular situation. High-commitment religions, such as the LDS Church, can cause trauma, even if the church is well-intentioned.
- The nervous system will filter trauma in the best way it knows how, which is amazing, but needs some conscientious oversight.
- If you are not careful, your nervous system can get overloaded and overwhelmed, or even arrested. This is called Arrested Development – like the TV show! The characters in that show are basically the way they are because they are the victims of Arrested Development!
- We can learn the skills necessary to unpack trauma and handle our emotions.
- Key skills include the ability to self-regulate your emotions and self-validate your choices and experiences.
When I read this book, and I believe it was on a train to Seattle, I reported to my wife: “I think I get it now.”
I said, “My internal systems have been overloaded and overwhelmed by all these issues. And I can address that.”
And we walked through it. We reviewed the parts of the book that explain that emotions are not good or bad – they just provide information.
I learned that I can tell my wife, “Hey, right now I’m feeling overwhelmed, or I’m feeling dysregulated, or I’m feeling angry.”
Then we can talk about it.
I can also develop skills in managing these moments of dysregulation so I don’t have to shut down for hours or three days.
Conclusion
And this is what she wanted from me. She didn’t necessarily want me to give her my conclusions to hard questions with an outline of my logic.
She wanted to know what I was feeling and why – what was going on inside of me.
And I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t know.
I didn’t understand that my “faith crisis” and my feelings of being lost in the fog, my vigilant search for validation from God as I searched for His path, and my anger of feeling lied to by the Holy Ghost and by church leaders, along with the regular challenges of life, had all ultimately overwhelmed my systems.
And what she was really wanting from me is that I would develop the skills I needed to recover from and handle that overwhelm.
But my problem was that I didn’t know those were skills you could learn. I didn’t even know it was a thing. I was just praying and trying to check the boxes I figured I needed to check for God to take the burden away.
Or, in other words, all I knew to do was to seek for external validation and external relief – I had to plead to God to fix these issues. And when I didn’t get that, I would wonder why it wasn’t coming – maybe I wasn’t being faithful enough, or hadn’t been forgiven of sin, or I just needed to check one more box upon which that blessing might be predicated….
But what this book showed me was that the reality of the situation was that I just had not developed the internal-coping and internal-validation skills I needed.
Well, I wish I could say that this has been the panacea for all my life’s problems. It hasn’t been that. I still have many of the similar frustrations and issues. But I’m learning to see my emotions and feelings as information that I can review and process.
I’m learning to recognize when I’m feeling off or dysregulated internally.
And I’m learning how to communicate this to my wife. And what we found was that when she said, “I wish you’d just be honest with me,” That’s what she was looking for.
This has been the Thinkering & Tinkering Podcast. I’m Fickle Father.