Join us on The Midlife Revolution as we sit down with Tommy Johnson, a writer and content creator who shares his transformative journey from a Mormon missionary to a mental health advocate. In this intimate conversation, Tommy opens up about the pressures of growing up within the LDS Church, his struggles with identity, and the unexpected lessons learned from his mission. Discover how he navigates the complexities of men's mental health, the stigma of addiction, and the power of authenticity in overcoming societal norms. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the intersection of faith, mental health, and personal growth. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that promises to inspire and provoke thought on the importance of self-compassion and breaking free from cultural expectations.

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hello beautiful humans

welcome to the midlife

revolution i am here with

tommy johnson yes welcome

to the podcast thank you

We're out here in the middle

of my living room,

so we're gonna compete with dog noises,

kid noises, and air conditioning,

and who knows what else is gonna happen.

It's a live show.

It is a live show, anything can happen.

That's right, anything can happen.

I'm gonna just introduce you

to Tommy Johnson.

Tommy is a writer and content creator.

Sometimes his work is

serious and sometimes his

work is lighthearted,

but he always hopes to

leave readers and viewers with something,

a smile, a laugh,

a thought or an idea after

interacting with his content.

In twenty nineteen,

he and his wife Madison

were married and the two

now live in San Antonio, Texas,

which is why we're here together today.

Super excited to have you here.

Thanks, yeah, I'm excited to be here.

I was happy that you reached

out and I'm happy that we

can make it work.

Yeah, good.

So I've been following Tommy online for,

I don't know, at least a year or so,

and I really have appreciated his content,

the energy that he brings

to the online space and the

fact that he's willing to

be open and share about his

journey and struggles and

triumphs and everything in between.

I really appreciate your

latest substacks and tell

us what it's called.

It's called Little Whims.

There's a backstory to that

in the first one.

So if you want to go check

it out is why it's called that.

But yeah, Little Whims on Substack.

Is that the one about the bee?

it's derived from a line in Emma

by Jane Austen.

Oh, yeah.

But I do write about bees as well.

There's a little piece about bees.

Love bees.

I love bees too.

And I love Jane Austen.

So when I heard that, I was like,

oh my gosh,

that's the perfect little thing.

I love it.

So I watched a couple of

your videos there on YouTube as well.

Yeah.

And is your channel Little Whims?

That one's just the Tomsters.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

But yeah,

you can find the Little Whims

stuff my Instagram, on YouTube.

Just try to put it.

in front of people's faces

all over the place.

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay.

So yeah, definitely go check them out.

The Tomsters on Instagram

and YouTube and Substack, right?

And Substack.

Okay.

Is it all the same username on all three?

Yes.

Okay.

Try to make it simple.

Yeah.

I tried to do that too.

Yeah.

Well, Tommy, I just want to hear,

I want you to share with

our listeners a little bit

about your story and your

background a little bit.

And we really, I was telling Tommy,

I brought him on because

June is Men's Mental Health

Awareness Month.

And I think we don't talk

about men's mental health enough.

And so I thought this would

be the perfect opportunity

for us to have that conversation.

For sure.

Yeah.

So go ahead.

Yeah.

So where we share similar

backgrounds is we both grew

up in the Mormon church.

And that's a lot of where my

story begins with sharing it online.

Grew up a member of the church,

spent most my life in Utah,

which makes sense with the

Mormon background.

around twenty eighteen.

So I would have been, let's see,

twenty three at the time

when my younger sisters

came out to me as gay.

because of that,

I had a real kind of

internal look where I

started questioning what I

just started to ask myself

some honest questions.

What do I really believe in?

Do I really believe what I

say that I believe on every

Sunday.

And I started going through these beliefs.

I started questioning every belief.

I started at square one.

Do I believe in God?

Do I believe in Jesus Christ?

Do I believe in this and this?

And for a lot of those answers,

it was still yes.

But it was for the first

time I started questioning

things and kind of gave

myself permission to

depart from approved

narrative and kind of

standard type of belief.

As the years went on,

I really struggled

particularly with LGBTQ issues

with my standing in the Mormon church,

with the Mormon church

having a very strict and

obvious belief that

marriage is between a man and a woman.

It was hard for me to

reconcile how I really believed,

which wasn't that,

and attended a church and

then subscribed to a faith

that taught that.

For a long time, I tried to make it work,

tried to make it work.

And in the summer of twenty

twenty two was really kind

of this tipping point.

I was watching a documentary

on Hulu called Mormon No More,

which I recommend to everyone.

about a lovely couple who

they also grew up Mormon.

They married men, had families.

And then these two women became friends,

ultimately fell in love.

And they're now a happy couple.

But a part of their story is

finding their true selves

and leaning into that and

listening to themselves and

watching that.

Again, in twenty eighteen,

things kind of started in

twenty twenty two.

I had four years of this

questioning coming up with

ideas and trying to just

settle into a place where I

felt like myself in that moment.

I thought I got to.

I really got to choose one

or the other being torn apart.

And it's really having an

effect on my mental health,

my physical health.

Anxiety is just of through the,

through the roof.

So I just kind of,

I felt like I had a lean

into one or the other.

And at that point,

which one I was wanting to

lean into for me was pretty obvious.

Still a really tough

decision to leave a faith.

All I knew for my whole life,

it was still tough to leave

that and still isn't easy

to navigate life today.

But I made the ultimate

decision to follow my heart,

my conscience,

leave the Mormon faith and

kind of start this post-Mormon life.

And there you

figuring stuff out for

myself and really lean into

this life of authenticity

that feels scary but more

true to myself yeah yeah it

is a scary space when we

when we sort of make that

leap to get out there and

it's it's interesting from

the mormon perspective

because people who've never

been mormon before or if

you're a faithful member of

another faith a lot of

people don't realize that

mormonism is so all-encompassing yeah

it really does take over

your entire life and it's

your entire worldview as well.

And so questioning that I

think is really brave and

also being willing to step

outside of that when I'm

guessing a lot of your

family is still in the faith or no.

Well, so extended family, yes.

There's seven of us in my immediate family,

and five of us have left, actually.

So I feel really blessed to have,

and in the Mormon spirit,

it's probably a little

ironic to use this word,

but some pioneers in my

family leaving the Mormon church.

But I did get to follow them,

and I'm really grateful for them.

And I've told them, like, hey,

without you going first,

it would have been a lot harder.

And I've

only imagine was like for

you so thank you yeah um

but also i'm sorry i wasn't

because in a lot of ways

when they were leaving i

was in this midst of a

struggle and i i wasn't

probably the most

supportive i wasn't trying

to get them to come back

but i wasn't also there to

say uh i mean i don't know

i feel like i could have

been better but um yes not

the first to to leave but

um yeah still um

making my own way through stuff.

Yeah.

And you also served a full-time mission,

right?

I did.

Yeah.

All two years up in Canada.

Okay.

What part of Canada?

Winnipeg.

Okay.

Yeah.

So central Canada, the plains of up north.

So very cold.

Very cold.

Yeah.

And then but also randomly, not randomly,

scientifically very hot in

the summer to hundred plus

degrees or forty plus,

as they would say in Celsius.

Yeah.

Very cold.

Yeah.

So the language that you had

to learn was the metric system.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was able to speak English,

but I did have to learn

kilometers and Celsius.

And so it is its own language.

yeah yes but you didn't

spend any time in the mtc

focusing on that right no

no that was no um you had

two weeks mtc just to brush

up and get really committed

to the lessons but yeah no

language to be learned

which was actually i was i

was really not wanting to

learn a language i was

really scared that i would

go out to somewhere where

english wasn't the first

language language and i

want to share my true

feelings and not have the tools to do so

So I was really grateful to get English.

I know some people are

bummed out about that

because Mormon missionary calls,

you don't choose them.

You get them.

They're given to you.

So you don't know until you open up,

I guess, an email now.

But for me, a packet of paper.

So I was very grateful to

get an English speaking mission.

But yeah,

full two years from twenty

thirteen to twenty fifteen.

OK, so after OK, first of all,

I have questions about the mission.

So because I never served a mission,

I got married when I was twenty.

And so at the time,

you couldn't go when you

were a female unless you were twenty one.

I really wanted to serve a mission,

but my life didn't work out that way.

But in the MTC,

I'm curious about that

because you said you only

spent two weeks there, right?

Did you feel at the time as

though you had some freedom

and space and ways to be your own person?

Or did you sort of feel as

though the MTZ was

tightening you down into a missionary?

Yeah, well,

so just from my perspective at that time,

being in the MTZ was how I viewed myself.

So I...

Living in Utah,

I grew up maybe twenty

minutes from the MTC.

So the mountain ranges I

could see from the MTC were

the ones I grew up seeing.

So I felt like I was at home

and I felt honestly like I

was kind of like at a church camp.

on steroids where it was

church stuff all the time

but it was what I had

prepared for my whole life

yeah and so I knew nothing

else um so I I definitely

viewed it as me personified

like this is what I was

made to do like it's what

I've been preparing

preparing to do

what the first shock was

was my first night in Canada

where it was my first time

leaving the country.

I know it's not that far,

but it is out of the country.

It was my first time away from my family.

At that time,

you could only talk to your

family twice a year on the phone.

They introduced FaceTime

later on in my mission, so we could...

see my family,

but it was only twice a year.

That's when this real shock

kind of hit me about like, okay,

this is something new, this is different.

But in terms of me wanting

to live authentically into myself,

my perception of myself was,

This is what I've been preparing for.

Yeah.

So in that regard,

I feel like I was in the perfect place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's really interesting.

So for those who've never been Mormon,

you'll know or you'll

you'll want to know that as a young man,

the pressure is extremely

high to go on a mission.

Did you feel that way growing up?

Oh, for sure.

I mean,

I didn't think not going was an option.

It was just a matter of when and where.

The question of, will I go or not?

That wasn't even,

that was already answered.

I feel like sometimes when

you go through a document online,

there's like questions or

lines that are blurred out

that you can't even mess with.

To me, that was that in my life.

It was like,

this one's already been

prepared and already answered.

It's locked in.

Can't mess with it.

You're going.

At what age did you feel

like you were locked in for sure?

As long as I can remember.

We were singing songs in primary.

So as a kid,

I hope they call me on a mission.

Yep.

So probably when I learned that song.

Yeah.

And I remember like my dad

served a mission to Sweden.

I remember hearing those

stories when I was young.

I'm getting baptized at

eight as a young man.

It was OK.

Well, this is step one.

And then.

looking and that you know

they present you with and

here are the rest of the

steps one of those is well

yeah then you'll serve a

mission this is kind of

this assumed thing as

again like you said

particularly with men who

are the ones given

priesthood power the power

to act and make decisions

within the church um a

young man gets that at

twelve if he's kind of

worthy enough i think now

it's eleven but at my time it was twelve

So at twelve, again, it's like, OK,

when you when you serve a

mission at fourteen,

when you when you serve a mission at six,

when you serve a mission, when you're,

you know, eighteen or nineteen years old,

it was always when it was assumed.

Yeah.

And I definitely recognize that growing up,

you know,

I would be in a seminary class

and of course we'd be

studying the scriptures.

But yeah.

It always seemed like there

was a little extra push for the guys.

Like, when you go on your mission,

you're going to need to know X, Y,

Z. And it's almost like I

feel in the same way that

women are sort of told,

if you get a job or if you have a career,

it's sort of this

expectation that you maybe might not.

But for men, it was like,

there's no question you're

going to go on a mission.

And it's so...

Again, for people who've never been Mormon,

starting at the age of three,

we start going to Sunday school classes.

And at the age of three,

they start teaching you these songs,

which are basically ways of

indoctrinating you into the faith.

I don't know if you feel that way.

Oh, for sure, yeah.

And I know that some people

might bristle at that word,

but the same way that I

feel like learning certain

versions of American

history as a kid is

indoctrinating to view the

country in a certain way,

I feel like it's the same way.

I would have never come up

with my own thought about

going and leaving my family

for two years.

That was really hard.

That wasn't my idea to do that.

I was told that is your destiny,

basically.

Because to add on to the songs and whatnot,

at the age of fourteen,

I received what in the

Mormon church is called a

patriarchal blessing,

which is a special type of

laying on of hands blessing directly.

It's sold as directly from God to you.

And in that blessing, it's

a bit fortune telling, fortune telling.

Yeah.

And it said, you will,

the time will come when you

will serve a mission.

And again, at my mind,

my mindset at the time,

I'm taking this as God is

talking to me about the future.

Yeah.

So that ruled out any type

of possibility of yes or no.

Maybe if it's like, yeah, well,

God knows everything from,

from what has happened to

what will happen.

And he's seen it.

So I will serve.

He'll he's already seen it.

So I got to do it.

Like I can't like it will happen.

So at a very early age,

the possibility of not going was,

Not even there.

Yeah.

And we can probably even

rewind a little bit from there, too,

because when you're born

into the church in a

faithful member family as a baby,

you're given a blessing in

the main sacrament meeting.

So rather than baptizing

infants in the LDS church,

you are blessed as an infant and then.

at the age of eight,

you're expected to be baptized.

And in that father's blessing,

your father gives you a blessing.

And I've heard a hundred of

them and they're all very similar.

And so if you're blessing a baby boy,

you're going to say,

we bless you that you'll

eventually serve a mission.

We bless you that you'll

find a worthy companion and

marry in the temple.

And we bless you with children.

And we, you know,

it's like they line your

life out for you already

when you're an infant.

And I don't have the words

of my infant blessing, but yeah.

Yeah.

I don't have mine either,

but I would put money on the, you know,

something similar.

Like you said, they are very,

very similar.

Yeah.

They're not technically all

supposed to be the same,

but you hear one and then, Oh,

that's pretty, you know,

that sounds like a good one

that you use it for you.

And then, and then,

Culture becomes a thing and

then they all kind of send us away.

Yeah,

and it's like a cultural thing that

they all kind of do.

And these are young fathers

who have not been trained

in any sort of clergy way.

They've just been brought up

in the church.

And so it's kind of, I don't know,

in some ways I think it's a

little bit sweet,

or at least I used to

before I realized how...

weird it was um but i think

it's kind of like a

father's hopes and

expectations for his child

and i think that's sweet to

one degree but to another

degree it does sort of

begin this cultural idea

that you're not allowed to

be an individual at least

it felt that way for me

yeah yeah it definitely felt

I mean, we were a part of God's army,

you know,

like this was a call to go and

change the little part of

the world that you're going to.

Two by two, you know,

missionaries are always with someone.

Yeah, you do join this bigger group.

And I think.

the way that it addresses

kind of this innate desire

to be your own individual

is by demonizing that part and saying,

well,

Yes, of course,

we're all born with our

unique desires and wants and needs,

but that's a part of the

human experience that we

need to shed as we are born

again in our commitment to

Jesus and to living his gospel.

A part of that is kind of

tearing away this

individual part of us and

falling in line with what

makes you qualify for heaven,

whatever that might be.

Yes, you are an individual.

Now,

are these parts of you that you feel

like are really unique?

That is true.

But what is also true is

that those are not good.

You know,

they acknowledge that that is there,

but they teach, well,

don't lean into those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's it is a super harmful

part of the culture.

that we are taught to sort

of suppress anything that

is different about us.

And I don't know if you, I mean,

you're a musician and I am too.

And so songs always really

resonate with me.

So those songs we learned as

children in primary are still with me.

I can still sing all of them,

all the words, everything.

But then also,

I don't know if you know The Killers,

but Brandon Flowers,

who's the lead singer of The Killers,

was either formerly a Mormon or still is,

I'm not sure.

But he wrote a song at one

point where the chorus is, I've got soul,

but I'm not a soldier.

And that was about his

decision not to serve a mission.

And it was groundbreaking

for him and his family for him to not go.

And I think about that so often.

And you telling your story

made me think about that again.

It's like they do expect you

to be a little automaton,

fit yourself into a mold.

You're all wearing the same thing.

You all have the same haircut.

You're all going to have.

And the other thing I found

so interesting is listening

to men come back from their missions.

and bear their testimony.

And they sort of have a

little to their voice that

reminds me of the MTC and

all the missionaries sort

of talk like this.

And it was always a little

jarring to me to think

that's not the person that

left at the time being faithful.

I was like,

isn't that great that they've

now adopted this way of

speaking because they agree

with the other missionaries

and everything.

But looking back on it now,

I feel sad because it's

like losing a piece of yourself.

to not even be able to have

your own voice.

Yeah, no, that's a very, um,

insightful takeaway, but I don't think,

um,

would be my first one just because I was,

you know, a part of it on that, uh,

on the, from the audience.

Um, but yeah,

that idea of a kind of a missionary voice,

um, does exist in that kind of, uh,

kind of wavelength.

And like you said, at the, at the time, um,

it was this idea of like, okay,

like you went out a boy and

you came back a man.

And that was evidence of

this godly man was like, uh,

you see the world differently.

You might even now talk differently.

I feel like if anyone's been

to a missionary who's come home,

it's pretty...

common to have someone

speaking now in english

forget maybe an english

word because they've been

speaking spanish for the

last two years or they kind

of you know struggle with

that too and that just kind

of was another kind of rite

of passage of like that's

just a thing that shows

that you really did the

mission well as yeah you're

forgetting your native

language because you were

so immersed in serving the

people with their native

language and being an

example of christ for them and

there were these little

cultural markers as a

missionary to kind of show

that you did it and you

were there and you've

accomplished these things.

This could exist in a bubble in Utah,

or I don't know.

I just know from my

or my experience,

there were kind of

these cultural markers of like,

yeah, like I went and I did this.

I learned the language.

I had the voice now.

I've earned it, you know,

or whatever it might be.

It was all part of kind of, yeah,

turning into this version

that at least I thought was,

that's what it should be

when you come home and there you go.

And now you got the rest of

your life to live as a return missionary.

You kind of got that mark.

Yeah, and hearing you talk about it,

it reminds me how,

sad and horrible it is

that there's a celebration

of the erasure of your identity.

And when you put it in those terms,

I just think cult, you know,

and I know a lot of people

get super offended when we

use that word in relation

to the LDS church, because even I,

as a younger person was like, well,

I'm allowed to talk to my

family because they're all members.

But if they weren't members,

they would discourage me

from talking to my family members because,

you know,

we're not supposed to take

counsel from non-believers.

So, you know, it does have those markers.

And I think I've mentioned

on my channel a lot,

the work of Dr. Steven

Hassan and his bite model.

And that's something we're

going to unpack at a later time.

But applying those

characteristics to the Mormon church,

if they're trying to

influence your behavior,

the information you can receive,

your thoughts and your emotions,

those are all markers.

of a high control group,

also known as a cult.

I wanted to ask you one more thing.

When you got to Canada or

when you left for Canada,

did they keep your passport,

the leaders of the church?

Um, so I've heard that that does happen.

Um, that didn't happen with us.

our mission boundaries did dip

into Minnesota, Minnesota.

So yeah, exactly.

So I served,

almost five months in Minnesota,

which I had to honestly re

relearn miles per hour and, um, uh,

Fahrenheit and all this stuff.

It was a funny going back to

everything I knew.

But so, yeah, we had our passports.

I think it might depend on

where in the world you might be.

Yeah.

But for us, we did have our passports.

Well,

I'm glad to hear that because I have

heard rumors that when you

either when you take off or

when you land that your

mission president keeps your passport.

And that's just kind of

another way of controlling, you know,

where you go.

So at that point, if you wanted to go home,

you'd have to.

to the guy who has your

passport yeah exactly and i

think that's a hard part of

it that you know it's hard

for all missionaries but i

think particularly for men

i want i want to honor that

experience to not be

able to make a decision

about what you you know

what you want for your life

if you suddenly decide on

your mission this is not

for me i'm having a super

bad time and i want to go home

You can't just leave.

You have to go talk to your

priesthood leader.

And even if they don't have your passport,

that's sort of the expectation anyway.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There was like one story.

And again,

it could have been just a story

from my time as a

missionary where someone's

parent came up and got them.

and took them home.

Whether or not that is how

seamlessly it went, I don't know.

But yeah,

you would have to talk to the

mission president.

Without being in those conversations,

I can almost guarantee that

the conversation would be,

don't go home and try to

convince that missionary to not go home.

But I mean, I had at that time, again,

my mindset was being out

here is the best thing possible.

And I feel bad about that

because I did have

companions where being out

there was a struggle.

And I was like, why?

You know, why do you want to be back home?

This is like the greatest

thing that we could be doing.

While at the same time,

I was really struggling with my own

loneliness and homesickness.

And so I didn't give them

the same amount of grace that I was,

you know,

would have liked someone to give to me.

But I just didn't understand.

Because again,

the way that I viewed it all

growing up was like serving

a mission is the pinnacle

of my young little life here.

that I have so far.

And this is the greatest

thing I have a chance to do.

And I took, honestly,

a lot of pride in being an Elder Johnson.

Missionaries, men are elder,

whatever your last name is.

And so my dad was Elder Johnson.

I had a brother out on a

mission at the same time as me.

He was Elder Johnson, but in Oregon.

Then I was Elder Johnson in Canada.

So I took a lot of pride in

continuing the tradition and

being kind of the next

generation of stuff and i

just didn't get it when

other elders didn't feel

the same i was like this is

a legacy thing this is cool

we're building this they're

like i just want to go home

what are you talking about

this is you know you don't

like the minus forty degree

weather i don't know what

you're talking about um but

yeah that that pressure and

i was as a missionary i

always appreciated

And look to the sister

missionaries because they

didn't have that same

institutional pressure.

I can't speak about their

pressures because I don't

know whether it's family or whatnot.

But I was always impressed

because I'd always ask them,

why are why did you decide to come out?

Because I knew they didn't

have that same pressure.

institutional pressure.

And I was always,

I always respected their

reasoning because it was

always or very commonly

rooted in this really

personal kind of spiritual

experience where they felt

like they were called to do that.

And I was always,

and even today if anyone

feels like they're doing

something out of kind of

this deeper spiritual thing and really

feel deeply about it,

I'm still impressed by that.

Um, so I always, as a missionary,

I always leaned on the sisters.

I was like, I can trust,

I feel a lot more.

I can trust on you guys, uh, to,

I don't know, to be out here and want to,

and, you know, kind of want to do it.

yeah,

that's an interesting take thinking about,

the difference between,

the male missionaries or the, you know,

the young men growing up

being really pressured into

the mission and the young

women previously,

at least when I was growing up,

it was a choice if you didn't get married,

you know,

if you weren't already married

by the time you were

to think about yeah you're

out there because you've

felt all this societal

pressure but you think it's

the right thing to do and

it's a legacy and

everything but but having

the females choose to go

that does sort of like add

a little bit of i don't

know strength to that

choice so i can see where

you might have leaned on

them a little more yeah and

again that was you know

definitely my um

perspective at the time um where i

Throughout my mission,

I had chances be in

leadership and whatnot.

And so if I needed

assistance or help or just an example,

I always turned to the sisters.

And I always expected, honestly,

they were... In my mission,

my anecdotal experience,

they worked harder.

They were kinder.

They were...

more successful in terms of

getting people to come to

church and join the church.

So why not?

I chalked that up a little

bit to the flirt to convert factor.

That could be a thing.

That could be a thing.

They were also older, typically being,

you know,

at nineteen years old now is

when women can go,

men can go at eighteen.

Yeah.

The reasons for that, there are none.

It's just it is what it is, is the reason.

So I could

it'll play a role as well.

But yeah,

I always just appreciated the

work of the sister missionaries.

They just were better at it.

Well, and to your point, though,

what the qualities that you mentioned,

hardworking, more kind,

more successful at getting

people to sort of

take the lessons.

Those were sort of the

pressures that I felt as a

young woman in the church.

I felt pressure to work hard.

I felt pressure to be kind.

I felt pressure to be more

spiritual than the men

because I did sort of feel like, you know,

men are manly men and women

are the spiritual nurturers.

And so,

If there's a man struggling

with his testimony,

you can help him with that.

And I always felt that

pressure of like if I was

dating somebody who was in the church,

which only happened a handful of times,

I felt pressure to be more

spiritual than he was

because if there was going

to be a struggle,

I didn't want it to be because of me.

Yeah.

You know,

so it's interesting the different

roles that we have.

But you mentioned you were

you felt some loneliness

and homesickness on your mission.

So mental health wise,

how did you deal with that

when you were out there?

Yeah.

So, yes,

I wasn't diagnosed with anything

prior to my mission,

like days after I got home.

And I'm so grateful for my mom for this.

She took me to a

psychiatrist and was able

to get some diagnoses and

get on some medication.

So I didn't know at the time,

but I for two years I was.

living with undiagnosed depression,

anxiety, and ADHD.

And so with the homesickness

and loneliness,

how I dealt with it at the

time isn't something I

would recommend to anyone now,

but the idea was I'm here for God.

I'll put that on God and

I'll trust him to take care of that.

What that did was provide relief for a day,

maybe, or for a time.

know.

nothing was being healed by that.

It just kind of delayed

things to a later date,

which was two years later,

and then I could handle that.

But mean, a lot of it,

I tried to just, I mean,

there's a story that's

shared from a former

prophet of the LDS faith,

Gordon B. Hinckley,

where he shares a story

where he was on his mission

And he wrote to his dad

about how hard it was and

just the difficulties.

And his dad said,

forget yourself and get to work.

And that was the message of

President Hinckley's

address that he was giving at the time.

And that was shared all the

time to the missionaries.

So I took that in.

Well, yeah, I'm struggling with this,

this and this and this.

But the people out there

don't have the truth.

And that matters more than

whatever I'm going through.

And what I'm going through

could be the devil trying

to stop me from sharing the good news.

So I never completely...

thankfully,

attributed my mental health

struggles to the adversary, to Satan,

to the devil, to like darkness, whatever.

I grew up in a home where we

could talk about stuff in a

healthy way or in a healthy

enough way where it wasn't

labeled like this is the

devil trying to sway you.

But yeah, forget yourself and get to work.

as a missionary,

that was any time I had struggles.

And the only time you can be

alone as a missionary is

like in the bathroom

because you're working two by two.

You can't be in the same

apartment and not be in the same room.

Those were at least the

rules at the time for me a decade ago.

So I would spend time in the

bathroom crying and then come out and

look good as new or maybe at

least I thought I did.

I probably was so puffy and

it was so evident I'd been

struggling in there.

But yeah,

and then just come out with a

smile and say, okay,

let's go and whatever.

So as I mentioned,

I didn't really deal with it.

Just kind of put it to the

side as much as I could.

And it wasn't until I got home,

I really started addressing

things in a real healthy way.

Yeah,

so this is one of the reasons why I

say that the LDS Church

tries to control your thoughts.

Because when a prophet makes a declaration,

that's considered scripture.

And it's considered to be

just the word of God,

just like it's printed in the Bible,

right?

So with President Hinckley says,

forget yourself and go to work.

That is a thought stopping technique.

that basically teaches us to

stifle our feelings and to think about,

like you were saying,

the greater good of

spreading the gospel

message over our own needs,

over our own mental health.

And so that's one of the

things that I had a lot of

trouble with wrestling with

coming out of the church

was all of those thought

stopping techniques and all

of those platitudes and

mantras and quotes that we

get in general conference where

we're told that like you

said if we're having mental

health issues it's the

adversary trying to tempt

us or if we're feeling

depressed we're not praying

hard enough or we're not

faithful enough so those

are super harmful messages

um i'm curious about you

got home and a week later

your mom had you in the

office of a psychiatrist

what was it that she saw or

heard that gave her concern

yeah so as i mentioned before we couldn't

talk with our families.

the phone or over like a

video message um except for

twice a year mother's day

and christmas but we could

email every week so on

mondays um that was our day

to send emails and read

emails so throughout my two

years i was open with my

mom about feeling lonely

feeling anxious um and

these different feelings

that i had it was always

followed up with however

I understand that God has greater plan,

you know, or whatever.

So it's never this call for help,

but honestly, and I feel like this is,

you know, shared a lot in, in any,

in a lot of Christian

denominations about a big

struggle and then how God helped you.

Right.

So,

i would share these big

struggles and there was

there had to have been

something where my well my

mom also struggles with

some a lot of the same

things i do so she was

reading these things and

i'm sure at the time she

was like okay that's nice

and all that there's this

nice message but there's a

bigger thing too right so

by the time i got home

there was a moment

where she had told me she's

like i understand god is great

there could be some more

things too that we can help you with.

And prior to my mission,

I had seen some therapists as well.

This is going back to parts

of my story where, just briefly,

I struggled with viewing

pornography as a kid.

And that's a big no-no in

the Mormon church.

And it was a secret I kept

for seven years from age

ten to age seventeen.

Periodic use of pornography in between.

I had this big old secret

that I felt like was a big problem.

And it separated me from God.

And it was...

a big source of anxiety and

depression for me.

So when I finally told my parents,

they directed me to talk to

my church leaders as well,

which is not fun,

but part of the process

there within the Mormon church,

you gotta do that.

And I'm grateful for this as well.

I was able to speak with a

therapist about that.

So I had positive

interactions with therapists prior.

So a combination of having

good therapy experiences

before my mission and my

mom noticing some stuff in

me that she noticed in

herself that contributed to, okay.

We understand, again,

that God is great and he

does so many good things,

but we can also help

ourselves and it's not a

sign of weakness.

It's not a sign of this

trial is too big for me to

give all the way to God.

I have to give a little bit

something to the professionals.

No, that's not a sign of anything bad.

Let's get you into someone,

get you meeting with

someone and try to get some

of these feelings that

you're feeling and some of

these things that you're going through

in check because they're not

necessary for this human experience.

Although you might be seeing it that way.

Yeah.

Suffering is not necessary.

Yeah.

You know,

and sometimes we feel like if we've been,

if we're struggling with

our mental health,

that it is a trial that was

given to us by God so that

we can learn to overcome it.

Yeah.

It's something that it's a

sticking point to remind us

that we're human.

That then reminds us to turn to God.

Right.

Right.

Like this defect.

Yeah.

that plays a role in turning this to God.

So the therapist that you

went to before your mission,

was it an LDS therapist?

Uh, I'll say luckily, no.

Okay, good.

Um, the first therapist I ever met with,

uh, I was in the fifth, uh,

as in the sixth grade and

I'd been having some

behavioral issues and that

was stemming from the secret.

And,

shame and whatnot yeah that

was an lds therapist from

lds family services um and

that was very much a uh

like a lds immersion

therapy is what i would

call it um you know just

kind of these different

education systems where

you know, like French immersion,

Spanish immersion,

you learn Spanish while

you're in school or whatever.

It was this idea of like, okay, yeah,

here's some real therapy or

some legitimate therapy stuff,

but also some spiritual advice as well.

And it put them on an equal

plane of effectiveness and importance.

And I only saw that therapist once.

So I was like, I don't,

this is just church again.

I feel if this is what therapy is,

then I'm good.

Just going for the three

hours on Sunday and then

the family home evening on

Monday and then the mutual on Tuesday.

I don't want to have church

again on Sunday.

Wednesday or Thursday or

Friday or whatever.

I'm going to pass on extra church.

So the therapy before my

mission as a teenager,

that was with someone

independent of any church connection.

We talked about church a lot

because it was still very

important to me.

And my impression from my

discussions with my

therapist was that they

were a member of the church as well,

which wasn't surprising

being Utah County.

But

Luckily,

that wasn't an overbearing or

overarching theme of our therapy sessions,

which I'm grateful for.

I want to rewind just a

little bit because people

on my channel who are not

familiar with the LDS

Church are probably going to freak out.

When you say that you

struggled with pornography,

this is the LDS way of

framing anything that has

to do with pornography.

So I'm wondering if what you

mean is that as a young man,

you had a perfectly developed,

mentally normal,

normative behavior of

looking at a picture of a

naked person or people and

thinking that was exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, even even better.

Yeah.

It came about because I was

in the fourth grade.

I'm living in Illinois,

so not Mormon dense or anything.

And a classmate of mine told

me of a particular website,

and I don't know what is or

is not allowed to say on the stream,

so I won't say it,

but of an explicit website.

And I thought,

there's no way this is legal.

The internet police would

not make that allowed, right?

So this is my mindset going through this.

And so to prove him wrong,

cause I was all about trying to, you know,

take some facts back to him on Monday.

He told me this like on a

Friday or something over the weekend,

I checked it out.

He turned it out to be right.

So I wasn't even trying to, um,

like you said like these

normative feelings you know

going through puberty or

whatever that wasn't even

my intent my intent was

just to prove it

classically wrong he ended

up being right but I felt

horrible about it because I

saw these things and I didn't

completely hate it yeah and

that was the part where i

was like oh no there's this

evil part inside of me like

if i was completely holy

completely good i would

have seen that and said no

like joseph running from

potterford's wife i would

have been out of there but i i wasn't

And I was had been baptized

two years prior at the very

old age of eight.

So I made this big

commitment to give my life to God.

And I'd already messed up.

That's how I was in this

moment because I didn't

want to run away so quickly.

wow,

what a indictment on my commitment and

not a poor indictment.

And I was so embarrassed,

felt so much shame.

Again,

I didn't tell anyone about that

until I was seventeen.

So that was seven years

through some very formative

years thinking I was pretty evil.

thinking there was a big

part of you that was evil.

Just this innate evil part of me.

Yeah, that's so,

so harmful to wrestle with.

And so the message is that

it's illegal to look at

pornography or that there

should have been a part of you

that wanted to run away and

never look at it again

where did that messaging

come from i know but they

they they need to know yeah

yeah um yeah so every every

six months um the

leadership of the Mormon

church addresses the

population of the church in

a meeting called General

Conference every April and every October.

And it was in those meetings,

particularly in the early thousands,

that internet is becoming a bigger thing.

I'm just a product of it.

I didn't know life before the internet,

but these older men are in their fifties,

sixties,

seventies talking about the

internet as if it's this

evil highway to anything

that you could see.

And so I'm hearing messages

of anyone who views

pornography is self-centered.

Anyone who views pornography

doesn't love their family.

And I've pulled quotes

because it's really easy to

feel a certain way and then think,

am I the...

Am I wrong?

Did they say normal things

and I took it the wrong way?

So I've gone back, honestly,

to kind of validate my own past.

Like, no,

I was hearing things and

interpreting it the way

that they were saying it.

But yeah, these messages from leaders who,

as you pointed out before,

we were seeing as prophets, seers,

and revelators.

So not just guys that we

thought had some good advice.

Guys that we were being

taught were on the same level as Moses,

same level as Noah.