Ashley Buckner is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist serving clients in Utah and California. Her path as a therapist began with a passion for supporting at-risk youth, which grew into a career dedicated to trauma healing. Today, she specializes in Brainspotting and provides care for adults, teens, and families, with a focus on trauma, anxiety, depression, and faith transitions. She is also passionate about creating safe, supportive spaces in her community.

What happens when you build a life outside your religion and hometown—then choose to go back? In this episode, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Ashley Buckner shares how moving from small-town Mormon Utah to Los Angeles, then unexpectedly back to Utah, shaped her healing and her work with trauma, faith transitions, and family systems.

Ashley talks about growing up in Cedar City in a mixed-faith home, the culture shock of landing in LA at 18, and how her years in California ultimately led her to specialize in trauma-focused therapy and Brainspotting. She also reflects on returning to Utah in 2018 to start a family, how that move reactivated religious wounds, and why living back inside the culture that shaped her became both deeply difficult and profoundly reparative.

In this conversation, we explore:

1. What Brainspotting is and why “where you look affects how you feel” can be so powerful for trauma, anxiety, and depression
2. How growing up in a high-demand religious culture impacts nervous system regulation, identity, and self-worth
3. The complex mix of grief, confusion, and relief that can come with faith transitions and religious disillusionment
4. Why going back to a triggering environment can sometimes open the door to unexpected healing
5. How Ashley now creates safe, supportive spaces for adults, teens, and families navigating religious trauma, mixed-faith relationships, and evolving beliefs

Want to know how you can begin your journey to hope and healing? Visit Elevated Life Academy for classes and free resources for personal development and healing.

Resources:

CherieLindberg.com

ElevatedLifeAcademy.com

Guest Links:

Instagram: ashleyb_therapy

website: ashleybucknerlmft.com

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Narrator

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. Through raw and heartfelt conversations, we uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspired those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

00;00;39;10 - 00;01;06;11

Cherie Lindberg

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy, and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg. And as usual, we have combed through many, many folks and we love, love to have healers come on and share their stories and how they're working with people, because we like to share that information all over the world. As you know, this is called Elevated Life Academy, and we want to help people live an elevated life.

00;01;06;13 - 00;01;27;22

Cherie Lindberg

And so our guest today is Ashley Buckner. I'm going to have her introduce herself. And then we're going to see where the conversation goes. I really love just like embracing, spotting, just letting uncertainty take its place here. And we'll see what what the conversation brings. So Ashley, tell us a little bit about yourself. Like where you're at your focus.

00;01;27;22 - 00;01;29;10

Cherie Lindberg

And then we'll go from there.

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Ashley Buckner

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Like Shari said, my name is Ashley. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I currently reside in Utah. I'm licensed in Utah as well as California. I have a small private practice here in Utah and also I serve clients virtually in California. I am also a bridge funding practitioner.

00;01;52;16 - 00;02;16;14

Ashley Buckner

00;02;16;16 - 00;02;38;06

Ashley Buckner

So I was actually born and raised in southern Utah, in a small town called Cedar City. I grew up here. I was raised in the Mormon church. My mom was a member of the church. My dad wasn't. And when I was 18, I moved to Los Angeles for college. So huge culture shock and obviously a big pivot in my identity and who I was going to become.

00;02;38;06 - 00;02;55;16

Ashley Buckner

And I didn't know at the time I was going to become a therapist, but I think it was kind of the trajectory that started it all. So I went to college in LA, and then I decided a couple years into that to become a therapist. I ended up going to grad school in San Diego, and I lived in California for 12 years.

00;02;55;19 - 00;03;19;07

Ashley Buckner

00;03;19;07 - 00;03;38;14

Ashley Buckner

Working with so many clients that in trauma, I don't know if I would have ever moved back to Utah if my religious trauma and my upbringing would have been activated, because in California I had no, you know, there was no activators around me. Essentially. I wasn't immersed in the culture. I was like, it just wasn't hitting those wounds.

00;03;38;14 - 00;03;45;04

Ashley Buckner

And so it's been really hard to come back to Utah, but also really healing. And that makes sense the same way.

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Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Yeah. So so then did this become one of your specialties then. Because. Yes. Yeah.

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Ashley Buckner

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Ashley Buckner

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Ashley Buckner

So I did training with Jeff Ryan, and he's actually my consultant now. And so that's how I got into brain spotting. And I was like, okay, I think I can open a practice in Utah. I knew subconsciously that there was a lot of trauma here, and that mental health was significantly impacted by the predominant culture. But I, I guess I didn't really fully anticipate what I was getting myself into.

00;05;06;00 - 00;05;45;20

Ashley Buckner

And so, as you know, with brain spotting, you essentially watch people relive the like, trauma and distress happening in their and their body, in their neurophysiology and because I grew up mormon, I'm very familiar with the culture and just all the dynamics that occur in the religion. And what I started to notice in my sessions, whether I was treating someone for depression or anxiety or, you know, difficulty in their relationship, it kept coming back to this religious trauma element in some capacity, right, related to their upbringing in the church or their experiences in the church.

00;05;45;23 - 00;06;05;04

Ashley Buckner

And so I just kind of fell into this specialty of religious trauma. I didn't and I didn't seek it out. It just, you know, as a therapist, wherever you are practicing, you have to be culturally competent. You have to be mindful of how the predominant culture is impacting mental health. And I just kept seeing it over and over and over again.

00;06;05;09 - 00;06;28;13

Ashley Buckner

So then I started kind of talking about it publicly a little bit on my social media. And then like last summer, things went a little haywire on the internet as you as those things can happen. And now I've just I mean, I have such a long wait list for clients and I'm referring clients to religious trauma therapists. And so that's my specialty now.

00;06;28;16 - 00;06;30;21

Ashley Buckner

And I didn't know I would get here. But here we are.

00;06;30;22 - 00;06;45;10

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, yeah. So if you can talk a little bit more about your, your self and that and what that was like for you to grow up in the culture and then to be doing this work.

00;06;45;12 - 00;07;02;09

Ashley Buckner

Yeah. It was really it was really, really difficult to be honest. I didn't have a traditional Mormon family because my dad wasn't a member until I was about ten years old. And he will say to this day that he only got baptized a member of the church. For me, I'm the oldest. I'm the oldest in my family. I wanted to fit in.

00;07;02;09 - 00;07;20;27

Ashley Buckner

I wanted to be a part of the community and you can't really fully if you're not really fully embraced in my opinion. In my experience, if your whole family is not a member, right? If your father men are placed with the highest authority, and so if they are not members of the church, there's just an element of shame that comes with it.

00;07;20;27 - 00;07;45;06

Ashley Buckner

So I always really struggled. I never felt like I fit in. But when you grow up in a religion like Mormonism, you never you, you always identify yourself as the problem. You always think I'm the problem. I'm the issue. Not maybe some of these unrealistic, unreasonable standards or cultural elements that are making me feel distressed. So I think I always grew up feeling like that.

00;07;45;06 - 00;08;06;25

Ashley Buckner

I had a lot of shame and moving to California and and being immersed in a different culture and making friends with people who just loved me for who I was. I didn't care what I believe in, didn't care what clothes I wore. They didn't care what I did on the weekends or anything like that. I think that was really transformative in my in my being to just be who I wanted to be.

00;08;06;25 - 00;08;29;18

Ashley Buckner

And so I actually stopped attending church when I was 20 years old, and I kind of stepped away completely at that time. And so when I moved back to Utah, I had been out of the church and I'd had my records removed formally for for almost a decade. So I didn't really expect to come back here and be impacted or activated by the culture.

00;08;29;18 - 00;08;51;12

Ashley Buckner

But it's such a predominant culture in Utah. It's hard for it to not kind of be activating or triggering to your old wounds. So I would say what allows me to do my job really well is because I have them a lot of my own work, and I've done a lot of my own deconstruction around Mormonism, and I feel very grounded and secure in who I am as a human being and as a woman.

00;08;51;15 - 00;09;12;23

Ashley Buckner

And and then at the same time, there have been things that have been activating and distressing. So you're when you grow up in the church, you're not allowed to say anything bad about it. If you say anything bad about it, you're like you're being led astray. I mean, there's a law of fear placed in you. And so I have been speaking up and using my voice to say, hey, not this isn't okay.

00;09;12;23 - 00;09;31;02

Ashley Buckner

And we need more safe spaces for people to come forward. And so I've had a lot of that I would say early religious trauma activated a little bit in a lot of ways. So I've had I've had to work through that. But I would say for the most part, I, I feel very secure in my own belief system, and that has helped me a lot.

00;09;31;02 - 00;09;34;17

Ashley Buckner

And spotting has been a huge, huge, huge part of this.

00;09;34;20 - 00;10;04;27

Cherie Lindberg

I mean, listening to what your, your you're saying is this is what my brain's telling me. If I'm wrong, please say. But it sounds like once you had all these different experiences, you started to be able to look at the compliance that you're here because you had freedom. Then you came back and were looking at compliance. And then it sounds like interacting with your own clients like this is what they were struggling with as well, which helped validate.

00;10;05;00 - 00;10;08;08

Cherie Lindberg

And so then now you're advocating.

00;10;08;10 - 00;10;15;10

Ashley Buckner

Yes. And I think I often feel like I am who I needed when I was 15 years old.

00;10;15;13 - 00;10;16;02

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah.

00;10;16;04 - 00;10;35;01

Ashley Buckner

Growing up in this community. Right. Nobody was talking about any of the things the impact of purity culture and the impact of not like being able to say, hey, this is really bothering me. This part of the religion, it's just you just get in line and do what you're supposed to do. And even nonmembers don't say anything because it's that the culture is so predominant.

00;10;35;01 - 00;10;44;20

Ashley Buckner

So I feel like in a lot of ways, what I do now is the person I needed, even when I was 20 years old and stepping away from. And that's got a really cool.

00;10;44;23 - 00;10;51;21

Cherie Lindberg

Now as a licensed marriage and family therapist, do you also work with relationships or is it primarily individuals?

00;10;51;23 - 00;11;18;23

Ashley Buckner

I primarily do individuals. I started my career in San Diego and I was really young. Not that that matters, but it was a really young therapist and I just don't think I, I was never really interested in couples work. So I mostly have done, you know, individual work. I started with adolescents. I've done I've done quite a bit of family therapy in when I work to residential treatment, but I haven't really done a lot of family therapy in private practice.

00;11;18;23 - 00;11;44;08

Ashley Buckner

And I just I get a lot of questions for couples, but that's not my expertise. But I, I think the way that my degree and my, my like, marriage and family really informs my practice is just the systems element and loving, you know, and especially in like the system of a high control religion and how all of those things function and the boundaries and the lack of boundaries.

00;11;44;08 - 00;12;09;26

Ashley Buckner

I think that really informs my expertise, which is kind of why I chose marriage, and family therapy was just like the relational element of a lot of things. And I think also too, there's just this very especially in Mormonism, there's a huge generational trauma component to all of this. And so really understanding the way that showing up as well in the family system is super important too.

00;12;09;28 - 00;12;21;22

Cherie Lindberg

So what is it like for you to be an advocate in the state of Utah, where there are people? My guess is coming to you saying, I experienced religious trauma.

00;12;21;24 - 00;12;49;02

Ashley Buckner

So it's been it's been really incredible. And the sense that so many people and I think because of brain spotting. Right. So a lot of experiences in Mormonism I didn't participate in because I left before some of the rites of passage, but because I work with the population and I watch people relive the distress associated with certain rites of passages, I can speak to it pretty clearly in regards to the neurophysiology.

00;12;49;02 - 00;13;12;20

Ashley Buckner

Right. And so when I talk about it, it resonates with a lot of people, and they often say, whoa, those are words I've never been able to have. I didn't I never had the words for this experience. And that's and that's so much of what I felt. And so the outpour and I mean, I've had hundreds and hundreds of people message me and share things like that or leave comments like that.

00;13;12;20 - 00;13;36;29

Ashley Buckner

And that has been incredible to know, you know, this, this collective group of people feel seen and heard and believed and less alone and also some language now for their pain and a lot of ways and and then I think on the flip side of that, it's been really difficult to be an advocate in a state that has so much relevant religious influence and control.

00;13;36;29 - 00;14;05;20

Ashley Buckner

So I've also been harassed and threatened and targeted and had to do had to deal with a lot of backlash associated with using my voice and my platform to speak up. Because because of just the black and white nature of Mormonism, to hear someone say, especially a mental health professional, talk about that. This religion can and does impact mental health, that there are aspects that can be distressing and harmful and traumatizing.

00;14;05;22 - 00;14;22;18

Ashley Buckner

When someone hears that it's just like an immediate, this religion's all bad. She's anti-Mormon, even though I've never used those words at all. You know what? They just don't have the capacity to hear what I'm saying, which is also word in a trauma as well. So it's been complicated, I would say.

00;14;22;20 - 00;14;44;07

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, yeah. And yet I want to just congratulate you. And in continuing to have your voice be authentic and advocate for those folks that need somebody, you know, to hold space for that for them. So I'm glad that you didn't let that influence you.

00;14;44;09 - 00;15;00;03

Ashley Buckner

I mean, I think there's that there's good days and hard days I take and I say this all the time, though, there's like in Utah, especially, there's church buildings on every corner. So if I had a client come to me and they were like, I want to be a member of the Mormon church, I'm like, okay, here's all the places I can refer you, right?

00;15;00;05 - 00;15;16;29

Ashley Buckner

That's easy for me to bridge the gap to that. But on the flip side, if I have a client come in and say, I'm really struggling with my beliefs, I feel really unsafe. I feel scared. There's not very many spaces like mine for me to say, oh, here's a great community for you to go be a part of.

00;15;17;01 - 00;15;17;14

Cherie Lindberg

Right?

00;15;17;16 - 00;15;23;08

Ashley Buckner

And so that's what I always come back to, is that's like, that's who I, that's what I want to be, and that's what I want to create.

00;15;23;09 - 00;15;24;10

Cherie Lindberg

Right, right.

00;15;24;16 - 00;15;27;00

Ashley Buckner

Because there's not enough spaces like mine in Utah.

00;15;27;02 - 00;15;34;06

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. And so first question that comes to mind is like, how are you creating community for yourself.

00;15;34;08 - 00;15;59;19

Ashley Buckner

Yeah. Great question. I, I that honestly is has been something that I've, that I think really supports me in this work. And this honestly, I have an incredible community and that goes to people here in the town I live in, as well as my friends that I met in college. I mean, there's people that I have just had these incredible relationships with for over a decade.

00;15;59;25 - 00;16;23;04

Ashley Buckner

My husband is such a solid support system. I have made quite a bit of good friends here in in Cedar City where I live, and actually most of my close relationships are not members of the church or and don't necessarily have some do have experienced that, some don't. And so I'm just constantly feeling supported by them. No one in my family is an active member.

00;16;23;04 - 00;16;43;03

Ashley Buckner

Most of my family members have left, but I also in like with all of this, I teach exercise, I teach movement, it's called hot sculpt. It's like I teach at a hot yoga studio. I used to teach them at a bar city in San Diego, but that is like my creative outlet. And also I have such an incredible community there.

00;16;43;05 - 00;16;59;03

Ashley Buckner

There's something about a group of people coming to move together, even though we're all different, all different walks of life, it doesn't really matter. We just connect in that way. So I would say that that is such a support system for me to do this work. And I don't think I could do this work without it.

00;16;59;06 - 00;17;25;02

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. No. And what's wonderful about that is for folks that come to you that are struggling and maybe want to leave, like you can give them a roadmap on how to build a community and how to connect and nourish yourself, because I think that's one of the reasons folks stay is because they're afraid of the loss of of the community.

00;17;25;04 - 00;17;49;20

Ashley Buckner

Absolutely. And the loss is so real. And I often do encourage people a lot to seek out community and and in places like a movement studio, right, or a yoga studio, but also like a coffee shop or ceramics class. Right? We we have to get outside of our comfort zone to find these communities, but they do exist. And I think one thing that hi can hi control religion does very, very well is community.

00;17;49;20 - 00;18;12;06

Ashley Buckner

I mean, especially in the Mormon church. They are so fantastic at community and making people feel like they have a sense of community. And I think my biggest message to everyone out there who might be struggling with this would be that community. Can that kind of community can be found anywhere, and sometimes it requires a little bit of discomfort for finding it.

00;18;12;06 - 00;18;15;14

Ashley Buckner

But it's absolutely possible. And I feel that so deeply.

00;18;15;17 - 00;18;37;26

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this issue, because I think it's an important issue. And it's not just with, you know, I've worked with people that and it's not just Mormonism. There's other folks that have had, you know, religious trauma. What would you like our listeners to know? Like maybe I haven't asked you the right questions.

00;18;37;26 - 00;18;55;20

Cherie Lindberg

I'm just wondering, like, aspects of you working in this population that would be important. Like maybe there's a listener here that's not even aware that they've had religious trauma, but maybe they listen and they're like, oh my gosh. Like, that's me. You know what? What would you want them to know?

00;18;55;23 - 00;19;19;18

Ashley Buckner

I mean, the first thing, the first thing that comes to mind, which maybe as cliche is like healing is possible and I obviously believe that so wholeheartedly as a brain sonic practitioner. But I think a lot of times religion, regardless of whatever religion it is, can strip you of your inner authority and make and, you know, you give everything to this higher power and you lose that connection with yourself.

00;19;19;18 - 00;19;41;27

Ashley Buckner

And I think the most touching thing about the work that I do is I've watched so many individuals find that connection and, and I would even and a lot of times they describe it as a higher power, right. Like the first time they've had that felt sense of God or the spirit. And I, I just want people to know that spirituality and connection to a higher power.

00;19;41;27 - 00;20;04;22

Ashley Buckner

You don't have to be in a religion to feel that. And I witnessed that. I would say every single day in my office, and I would even say for myself personally, because when I left Mormonism and for a long time I was like anti any sense of a higher power, it was not something I was even open to, and that was because of my own religious trauma and my own upbringing.

00;20;04;22 - 00;20;34;28

Ashley Buckner

But and I would say, especially since becoming a brand spotting practitioner, I am such a spiritual person. I was already a spiritual person in the sense that like connecting to nature and and my family and movement, but this is actually given me a felt sense of something bigger than myself. I, I don't necessarily like label it God or or whatnot, but just holding space for the human condition and watching people go into the darkest kind of parts of their being and come out the other side.

00;20;34;29 - 00;20;59;02

Ashley Buckner

Here, there's just this felt sense that there's something bigger. And, and so I, I feel that you can be a super spiritual person and not going to church. And I think a lot of times religion acts like they hold the keys to that relationship, to a higher power. And I want people to know that they hold the keys like it is within that it's within all of us.

00;20;59;02 - 00;21;30;22

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah. And I think, you know, and I've come across as too, that many folks confuse religion and spirituality. They don't see that they can be different. They they tie them together. So I really liked how you said that, especially the inner wisdom. You know, the inner empowerment. Like there's so many places that we go where it's a system and it's compliance and it's not about you, it's about I have power and control over what you think, feel, all that kind of stuff.

00;21;30;24 - 00;21;48;01

Cherie Lindberg

And I really like what you're saying about bringing it back to the individual so that they can feel fully whole in themselves and celebrate. Celebrate who they are as a, as a person and and connect with that. We all have that in us. Yeah. I agree with you.

00;21;48;04 - 00;22;16;11

Ashley Buckner

Yeah I absolutely and what I love about brain spotting too, in, in when you're working with like someone who has gone through religious trauma is that they it's their nervous system doing the work. Right. They've had so much outer authority. So much of that power control dynamic happening. And as a practitioner, you get out of the way of that and you just hold space and let that that inner knowing kind of navigate the session.

00;22;16;11 - 00;22;22;26

Ashley Buckner

And it's really powerful to watch them connect to what's always been there.

00;22;22;29 - 00;22;37;01

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. Beautiful. So without, you know, naming any names, either share a first experience of doing this work or a most recent experience of doing this work.

00;22;37;03 - 00;23;03;15

Ashley Buckner

Yeah, I actually I have, I have a client that I'll never, I'll never forget. I'll never forget her. She was actually in the early stages of leaving the church and really, really struggling because it's for the community aspect, right. And also the family aspect. A lot of a lot of people who leave their family members are leaving members and they and they really struggle when their children leave.

00;23;03;15 - 00;23;25;19

Ashley Buckner

Because part of the religion, especially in Mormonism, is that the only way to be together forever and heaven is that everyone's a member and everyone follows that, right? And so when their children, their adult children leave, just creates a lot of distress. But anyways, so she had come, she had specifically thought me out for what I do and and specifically brain spotting.

00;23;25;19 - 00;23;55;04

Ashley Buckner

And just mostly our sessions, our brain spotting sessions were focused to target that activation related to stepping away. And I will never forget I don't even remember what the target was. But you know, she goes into our nervous system, working through just the activation and distress of being rejected by her family and everything coming up. And at one point, you know, getting to the bottom of the wave, right, getting getting to that resilient piece, she said.

00;23;55;04 - 00;24;23;11

Ashley Buckner

I think this is what the spirit is for, supposed to feel like. This is what it means to to know. And and it was just like it was so powerful because I'm doing I'm just I'm holding my brain spotting point or, you know, like I'm just holding that space and, and following her nervous system. And then to and I mean, I can, I can like be thinking that in my head as the clinician and you're resilient like you've always known.

00;24;23;11 - 00;24;35;19

Ashley Buckner

I do this right. But it doesn't matter what I think it matters what my client thinks, like watch her come to that knowing within herself. And she described it and she's like, oh, this is what I was always supposed to feel. Growing up in the church.

00;24;35;24 - 00;24;44;13

Cherie Lindberg

That's beautiful. Yeah. And and then to feel that inside yourself and then to witness that as the practitioner. I mean, isn't that why we do what we do?

00;24;44;16 - 00;24;59;21

Ashley Buckner

That's exactly why we do what we do, you know? And it's it's such a beautiful phenomenon because it doesn't I could be thinking, I could, I could want to say it out loud, but it doesn't have the same impact. If it come, then it does a little wrong way that.

00;24;59;21 - 00;25;23;09

Cherie Lindberg

Lives inside the client and they connect with it. That's the most powerful thing. Absolutely. Wow. Well, thank you, Ashley, so much for coming and for sharing your beautiful story. And we will make sure we have all your socials on on the on the podcast. I'm, I'm sure you're going to have a bigger waiting list, but thank you so much for coming and and sharing such a hopeful story.

00;25;23;11 - 00;25;28;10

Ashley Buckner

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me of so great.

00;25;28;13 - 00;26;02;22

Cherie Lindberg

So, dear audience, maybe you know someone who has religious trauma, or maybe you yourself are still struggling with your own religious belief system, or the difference between religion and spirituality. I think Ashley had some very beautiful, thoughtful, real things to say about that. And maybe there are some folks out there that need to hear this, to feel supported, to not feel so alone.

00;26;02;24 - 00;26;26;28

Cherie Lindberg

And so I'm just inviting you as I always do, to share with anyone that you think would benefit, because we continue to spread the word to get as much information out there as possible, that it is possible to live an elevated life, and that there are many healers and coaches and people that can hold safe space for healing.

00;26;27;01 - 00;26;51;19

Cherie Lindberg

And healing isn't the end. Everybody, it's becoming whole is what we're trying to do so that you can flourish and grow beyond what happened to you. It's not your identity, it's just something that happened to you. So with that, until we see each other again next time, thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for sharing.

00;26;51;22 - 00;27;10;20

Narrator

Thank you for joining us on another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy stories of Hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live an elevated life.