Small Lake City
S1,E28: Therapist - Natasha Helfer
The journey through mental health is seldom linear, and in this episode, we traverse the varied terrain of ethics in therapy, advocacy, and the impact of systemic racism and LGBTQ+ affirmation in clinical practice. Natasha brings to the table not just her expertise, but heartrending stories of mixed-faith couples striving for harmony, individuals grappling with internalized shame, and the courageous fight against the stigmas that too often plague conservative communities. These stories are not just case studies; they're raw, real-life examples of resilience and the human spirit's quest for acceptance.
Our episode doesn't shy away from the hard-hitting issues: we tackle the factors influencing mental health in Utah, from the pressures of living at high altitude to the societal expectations that weigh heavily on individuals. Experts like Lisa Diamond, Braxton Detson, and Kristen Hodson lend their voices to our probing discussion on faith and sexual identity, and we spotlight the pioneering work at Symmetry Counseling. We also touch upon emerging trends, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, that are reshaping our understanding of mental health care. Join us for a deep and meaningful exploration into the hearts and minds of those navigating the intersection of mental health and personal belief.
Please be sure to like, review, follow, subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family! See you next time
https://smalllakecity.buzzsprout.com
Instagram: @smalllakepod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SmallLakeCityPodcast
TikTok: @smalllakepod
Other Platforms: https://smalllakecity.buzzsprout.com
The journey through mental health is seldom linear, and in this episode, we traverse the varied terrain of ethics in therapy, advocacy, and the impact of systemic racism and LGBTQ+ affirmation in clinical practice. Natasha brings to the table not just her expertise, but heartrending stories of mixed-faith couples striving for harmony, individuals grappling with internalized shame, and the courageous fight against the stigmas that too often plague conservative communities. These stories are not just case studies; they're raw, real-life examples of resilience and the human spirit's quest for acceptance.
Our episode doesn't shy away from the hard-hitting issues: we tackle the factors influencing mental health in Utah, from the pressures of living at high altitude to the societal expectations that weigh heavily on individuals. Experts like Lisa Diamond, Braxton Detson, and Kristen Hodson lend their voices to our probing discussion on faith and sexual identity, and we spotlight the pioneering work at Symmetry Counseling. We also touch upon emerging trends, such as psychedelic-assisted therapy, that are reshaping our understanding of mental health care. Join us for a deep and meaningful exploration into the hearts and minds of those navigating the intersection of mental health and personal belief.
Please be sure to like, review, follow, subscribe and share the podcast with your friends and family! See you next time
https://smalllakecity.buzzsprout.com
Instagram: @smalllakepod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SmallLakeCityPodcast
TikTok: @smalllakepod
Other Platforms: https://smalllakecity.buzzsprout.com
What is up everybody and welcome back to the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, eric Nilsen, and today's episode I'm really excited for. It is a topic that I've been wanting to cover since the beginning but really wanted to wait until I could find the right person to help cover it, and the topic is something near and dear to my heart mental health. And so the guest today her name is Natasha Helfer. She is a therapist specializing in sexual trauma, shame, religious transitions, as well as general therapy. So a lot of great topics. Because a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 1:But Salt Lake City is right in the middle of what's called the suicide belt that runs all along pretty much the Rocky Mountains and, as most people are aware, with the dynamics in Play at Utah, especially with religious dynamics, it makes for a lot of specific mental health issues that most other places don't go through. One thing I will say is we do talk about faith, transitions and post-Mormonisms, but nothing that should make anyone uncomfortable, but wanted to give everybody warning beforehand. But let's jump into the combo with me and Natasha, because I knew I wanted to cover mental health in Utah, because not only is it something I'm passionate about and prioritize, but it's a very unique topic within Utah because of the dynamics that drive it, that make it very unique compared to other geographies, so to speak. Yes, but then what I did was I reached out to all of my therapists.
Speaker 1:I've had in Salt Lake in my adult life, both current and previous. I was like if you had to have someone who understands the landscape of mental health, who would it be? And Braxton Dutson, my therapist, was like you've got to talk to Natasha, she knows what's going on and can help a lot. Love Braxton yeah, me too, like I think he was actually one of my first male therapists that I had, and at first I was kind of dubious because I was, I mean, raised by pretty much a single mom, two sisters, always been kind of more comfortable with, like women, especially talking to me about life. And so he's the first one like okay, we're good, like we can do this.
Speaker 1:This is fine, um, but, um, but yeah, and so super, so glad to be here. I'm super excited to be here with you, thank you, yeah, no, so much. And it's um and it's interesting because I mean kind of like leading into it all um, and we were kind of talking about it briefly before, but it's all like is a very unique place with mental health. Um, I tell people that we're in like the quote suicide bell, unquote.
Speaker 1:People don't even know what that means or that we're in here, and I mean before we kind of dive into a lot of like the, the specific stuff about mental health and what you see and what you experience in your practice day to day. We'd love to hear more about, kind of how, how you got here and a little bit of your story, because, if I remember correctly, you're from the midwest. Yeah well, I actually am from military. That's an important distinction.
Speaker 2:So I moved all over the place when I was little.
Speaker 2:I really can't claim one place, but my experience in Utah, my first experience in Utah, was actually in middle school. We were stationed down in Dugway Proving Grounds, so that's, you know, that's out in the middle of nowhere out there in the West and uh, but we would come into this all, like you know, on weekends and things. So that was kind of my first experience as a youngster with the culture. And then I came back to Utah for my BYU college experience, my undergraduate experience, and then my parents moved here about that same time permanently. So when they retired from the military they came here to do kind of their second career and then. So then this kind of their second career and then, um, so then this kind of became home for me as far as where do I go when I go on vacation or where I go to visit family, and so I've been very familiar with the salt lake city area for a long time and then moved here about three years ago thanks, well, four here. When was covid?
Speaker 1:I do lose time, we're 2024, I guess, end of 2019 is when it came well, it's so funny now because we've gotten to the point where it's like oh wait, yeah, that happened. And when was that why? Because I saw a post I think it was this month that marks like the four years. Four years ago it was declared a pandemic yes, right now in march yeah, yes, so it's.
Speaker 1:It's a nice note, we're out of that, um, but I mean, what kind of places did you? Because I assume, when you say you grew up in the military, there's a lot of different places that you called home, yes, or some of those spots, oh gosh, lots of places.
Speaker 2:I mean, we lived in Kansas, we lived in Georgia, we lived in Massachusetts and North Dakota. I was born in Germany and then we spent some time in Spain. That was actually not military oriented, but it was education oriented for my dad. That's where he went to medical school, so it's kind of all over the place.
Speaker 2:Spanish was my first language, my mother's from Argentina and Latina, so it's, you know, white Latina, yeah, and so, uh, that was my first language. So, yeah, I've kind of been, and I'm not even telling you all the places. New York, colorado, gives you an interesting perspective.
Speaker 1:I've been all over the place. That's so fun, yeah. So then you come to BYU. You study here, yes, your parents, like it just kind of becomes a comfortable place just because there are so many people here where you come to visit, and then eventually, obviously years ago, started to move here full time. Yes, and so at BYU, I mean, is that when you started studying uh, I mean, I mean mental health therapy or what kind of led you to want to pursue that as a career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I came to BYU, as most people do in college, thinking you're going to study something and then change a few things along the way. So I think I started as a business major. That was going to be my goal, but that was really horrible for me.
Speaker 2:I did not like it and I took a psych 101 class and it was with Tony Ann Roberts, who was a phenomenal speaking a teacher and had just started at BYU. She's actually non-LDS and she had just some phenomenal perspectives and she really kind of impacted my desire to dig in deeper into that field.
Speaker 1:So I got my undergraduate in Bachelor's of Science in Psychology Awesome. So my parents are both medicine-based my mom's a pediatrician and my dad was a pediatric neuropsychologist. And it's funny as you grow up you start to realize kind of why your parents do certain things and like see your own traits in them a lot more, just get a little bit more, just pay a lot more attention to it and like that's one thing I've realized from my dad is like I love psychology, I love human behavior, I love anthropology, like I love seeing how humans are. Like that that's, that thing's dead. We got that there. So you got here from BYU and did you just jump into practicing or did you go back to school again and get a master's or PhD?
Speaker 2:or what was your path after that? Yeah, you can't practice as a clinician with a bachelor's level, so I knew I had to go on and get my master's degree in one of the fields you know social worker, marriage and family therapy, or clinical counseling. So I took a year off. I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. Next, I was in the process of dating and possibly getting married which I ended up doing.
Speaker 2:And my ex-husband lived in Wichita, kansas, so I started looking at programs there and so I ended up going to Friends University for their marriage and family therapy program, which is interesting because Friends University also has kind of a bit of a religious Christian background.
Speaker 2:It was Quaker founded back in the day.
Speaker 2:It's no longer really associated with the Quakers.
Speaker 2:So I went from one kind of religious institution to another kind of religiously influenced, probably not quite as strict yes, not as strict but definitely had christian influence, and, like my professors and some of my professors not all of them would have kind of some christian ideologies that would kind of find their way into things that we would talk about, um, although nothing that would consider unethical or that was, you know, too profoundly like this is how you should do it because it's the Christian way, not like that, but just interesting to see how their faith journeys impacted their professional journeys as well, yeah, cause it's like, cause I'm from University of Utah obviously not a religious school and it's fun comparing experiences to my friends that did go to BYU, cause I mean, obviously it's pretty much down the middle and it's so funny to like just even the thought of being like, oh, you're going to go to your biology class and then you're going to your Book of Mormon class and like, just for how I'm like opening with a prayer like that just seems so like wild and foreign to me, especially when you think about, I mean, byu and Utah like very liberal, not very, but liberal school, a conservative school, and different approaches.
Speaker 1:but it's fun that you get to see the kind of two different sides of that same kind of spectrum of being at a religious school and doing that. I mean, did you like being in Wichita and Kansas and did that resonate with you, or were you kind of yearning to be other places?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wouldn't say Wichita resonated with me. It's a fairly conservative state politically and social justice wise, and so those are things that have always been a little bit more of a struggle and I try to be a little bit more progressive, and that was the same case at BYU as well.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know how much you want to get into this, but as so my parents were converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the mainstream religion here in Utah, and so, but we had never lived anywhere around the LDS corridor right, and so, except for that one time in Dunway, just this once.
Speaker 1:Even then you were so alone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there was an LDS influence there. And I remember doing things, you know, in my ward, in my community, my church community, that are very much formative memories for me, but for the most part as a convert to a religion, a convert family, there's a lot of, you know, trying to figure out the new community, trying to figure out how you fit in and what's the language and how do people do things, and so I definitely felt that throughout my growing up years. So on the one hand, I didn't totally fit in because I didn't know all the things. On the other hand, I didn't fit into the rest of the culture either, because once you tell people, hey, we're Mormon, right, we're LDS, at least out in the outside world, there's quite a bit of distrust. Or even, you know, like I, I don't know discrimination is the correct word because I wouldn't say it was ever formally discriminated against but just a lot of distress and wondering can we, you know what's that about?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean it's like a lot of labels and a lot of, yeah, a lot of labels, assumptions, a lot, yeah, yeah, exactly, I thought that a lot growing up and so, which was confusing to me, because again as converts, we didn't have a whole lot of history about polygamy or you know, understanding kind of the historical nature of what that meant. Um, so I was looking forward to coming to Brigham Young University and I was like oh, finally I'll be amongst you know.
Speaker 2:Quote unquote my people. Finally I'll be amongst, you know, quote, unquote my people, you know, and I'll finally not be this outsider. But then I come to BYU and I feel very much an outsider there as well, right, because I don't fit this kind of classic upbringing or some of the standards.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? Your great-great-grandparents?
Speaker 2:weren't pioneers? Yeah, exactly, not that we don't have the pioneer history, which is a lot of what people talk about. Even small things, like I would take out my deck of cards and say, hey, let's play. Jim Rummy and several of my BYU roommates were like oh, those are of the devil, I'm like wait, what Am I doing?
Speaker 2:something wrong, like we played cards all the time in my other LDS wars. So there were some cultural factors just coming here, which is a more mainstream kind of space that still didn't feel like like I fit in. So I didn't look like a lot of the other young women. I didn't act like them, I didn't have the same standards. I had spent a year in Argentina before going to BYU, visiting my mother's family and culture, and had had a lot of freedom, you know, and would be able to go out late at night and go to dance parties with friends.
Speaker 2:There was some chaperoning, but you know I was, I was, you know living standards and everything, but I had a lot of freedom. And then, coming to BYU, it's like 10 o'clock, curfew and you know boys and girls can't be in the same place as far as dorm rooms. It just felt very like oh wow, this is like taking 10 steps back and how I'm being treated as an adult, an emerging adult. I'm really being treated like a 15-year-old teenager, just staying here, don't screw anything up. Yeah, have a good one. Yeah. So at the time I internalized a lot of that. It wasn't like, oh, this is weird, or these people are weird, or the church is weird, or the school is weird. It's more like I'm weird, there must be something wrong with me that I'm not fitting into this community.
Speaker 1:I mean that's gotta be hard too, because I mean, again, byu is such a place and like I'm definitely generalizing here but people are pretty much carving copies of each other.
Speaker 1:Everybody more or less has the same background, as more or less the same beliefs, more or less agreeing to the same rules and behaviors of like the community they're abiding to, and so to be someone's like oh, I'm like, not this, it's like. It's like just such a contrast to that. So even my friends that were like, oh, I'm mormon but I'm not like mormon, like, like, like this, you just feel like the outsider, because there's literally rules against being kind of like those people, especially having that freedom before. I mean especially like the freedom of like pre-college, where I mean if you're in high school, you're under some sort of stewardship of your parents, and then you have this gap year where you're like I'm gonna go down to Argentina and go visit my mom's family, I'm gonna have so much fun. It's probably like one of the first times where you're like, oh, I'm an adult and can go do things, especially in a country that rewards and does that so much more and is so much more social.
Speaker 2:And then you show up in Provo and it's gone well. And even countries like Argentina have like humongous support in public transportation. I could go anywhere in the country just by getting in a bus or a train or you know. I didn't need to drive a car or have you know, so I really did have a lot of independence which was really beautiful and um came back to a very, you know, very different environment.
Speaker 1:So then we go back to Kansas and do you get your master's PhD.
Speaker 2:I get my master's degree in marriage and family therapy and then after that you can. You know, when you get a two-year master's degree, usually it has an internship that's involved with that, and then you have to go forward with usually what's about a two-year postgraduate degree process of getting your license, which means you have to work under somebody else's supervision and so I did that as well and then you can either work for an agency or work for yourself or work for a group practice. So that's that's the direction I went, thanks and how would?
Speaker 1:how is those those first couple of years when you're, I mean, on your own who Did it feel like you wanted it to feel?
Speaker 2:Was there any kind of differences?
Speaker 1:or did it meet all your expectations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always loved being a therapist, a clinician. I always loved the training. I always felt very, on the one hand, you know, especially when you're starting, there's a lot of imposter syndrome Like what am I doing? Do I know what I'm doing? Am I helping people? I was young.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes a lot of people go into mental health practice, kind of as a second half of life type of a profession. So half of my, more than half of my cohort was what I would say like 35 and older. Um, so there I am as a, you know, 23 year old starting out. You know someone you've got a family who's has a lot of issues and children, and you know I was just married, just married when I started sending kids or you know. It's kind of like oh yeah, let me give you advice on things that I don't have any real personal experience with.
Speaker 2:But the training I received was very good. Start, noticing, in the Wichita corridor, which is, of course, you know the Bible Belt, is part of the Bible Belt is that, even though I felt very good about my training, very good about my professors and the supervision I got, pretty quickly I started realizing a lot of my cohorts were evangelical Christian or Pentecostal Christian or you know all these different kinds of religions that are more central to those kinds of geographical areas. And I started seeing the ethical issues that come up when people's religions start interfacing with mental health practice and what people think about. What does this mean for what? What does it mean to have good mental health? What does it mean to have good relational health? What does it mean to have good sexual health? And now your religious ideas can get very intertwined with how you're presenting truths that may have more to do with your religious beliefs than actual social science.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm sure that's hard Because obviously, like in the Bible Belt, like you said, in the Baptist, pentecostals are very like on the Christian spectrum of high demand. They're closer to the top than the bottom and obviously, coming from I mean the LDS faith, that is one of the most high demanding of them all. I'm sure it was like a lot of interesting perspectives for you to see that in like almost like a petri dish, but not necessarily I mean applying to your own life or like feeling like it's looking at itself. But you start to make those correlations before. Do you feel like you had that experience in interacting with that specific population?
Speaker 2:or do you feel like you already had a lot of that?
Speaker 1:history before because of like your life experiences and getting your degrees.
Speaker 2:I think that being in that population in particular helped me see how, oh, if I'm not careful, I could have some ethical missteps myself because, like if I had done my training here in Utah, my clinical training, and there had been other LDS therapists and they would have been talking about things that I more resonated with from my doctrinal gospel perspective, maybe I wouldn't have caught that as much.
Speaker 2:But when I was in this other space with other you know, other types of Christians primarily I didn't really work with very many Muslim or Hindu or other types of religions Then I could see how they languaged that religious ideas was different than mine, so they would make assumptions that everybody must think this way because that's their majority, and I'm like, ooh, that's not really how I think about it.
Speaker 2:And now I can see how you're projecting that onto our client, especially when we're doing co-therapy or we'd have group sessions where I could see how other clinicians would show up and that would make me pause and go. I wonder if this is something I'm doing without recognizing it with my own biases, my own religious biases of who god is, what doctrine is and how that interfaces with people's lives, and I could see that a lot with even clinicians who might say well, god doesn't, doesn't believe that. So just with that sentence you have a clinician who's assuming there is a God maybe your client believes in a God or not and then now you're imposing your sense of God onto another person who may have a very different sense of who. God is right some people believe in that and a loving deity some people believe in a punitive deity.
Speaker 2:Some people believe in a deity that's very involved in their day-to-day lives. Some people believe in a deity that's very involved in their day-to-day lives.
Speaker 2:Some people believe in a dating that's kind of removed you know from, from caring about small things, and so it was just very interesting to see those kinds of things pop up where I was like boy, if I was the client and I had heard a therapist say that that, one, it wouldn't jive with my beliefs and my values and, two, I would feel uncomfortable and three, I feel like now you're projecting something onto me that isn't mine to have.
Speaker 2:So these ethical issues became very, very important to me from a very early stage and that's significant for my career path, especially coming here to Utah, because then that really propped me up to realize how this does show up in LDS culture as well, with LDS therapists. So now I had I was like, oh, we do it too, you know, whereas I don't know if I would have been trained here, if I would have been as adept to recognizing it, because I would be swimming in my own space. But I wasn't swimming in my own space and I didn't like how that felt. And then I started realizing, oh, I don't like how this feels in lds land either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's interesting, like, hey, it's, it's amazing, you have this like introspective and perspective of your own biases via seeing what's happening around you. Even if you're working with your peers are, I mean, 10, 12, 15 years older than you that you're like oh wait, I see this bias in you that you don't see. And it's interesting when, like in those perspectives, especially when religion's involved, because it's something I've thought about. A lot is like for me and like because I like to consider myself an open-minded person.
Speaker 1:I like to learn new things. I like to change my opinions based on I mean experience and new data that I acquire.
Speaker 2:But it's interesting when, like and this isn't a bad thing, isn't?
Speaker 1:a good thing. There's probably more nuance and context to it, but there's, like, this filter that gets placed on anything that happens. It's like it has to go through that. Does it align with my religious belief? Does this what I? Is this how I perceive the world? And then, because I have to go through there, anything that comes out of you also has that filter that comes out of it.
Speaker 1:So it's your point with your colleague who's like oh, like, yeah, but that's not what god sees, that you're like, oh, like. There's so many things that just happened in those like couple words that I can't even have that. But I like that. You have this um, uh, dedication and loyalty to your practice and like what you want to do, instead of because you could have easily been like they're religious I'm religious, we all believe in a god like of course it's going to come into this and move on, but instead you're like, no, no, no, like. I want to have my clients and everybody have the best experience possible, because I believe that mental health is important and one of the key facets of that is having someone help you through that journey when you need to, and someone needs to be that professional, and I mean dedicated to their craft and their practice and and not have their biases get in the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're taught to take ethics pretty seriously in any of these master's degree programs and one of the ethics ethical components is to be able to watch our own self-biases, especially when it comes to things like culture, religion or sexual orientation. You know all these different types of ways that people show up. That might be very different from how you show up personally, but you're supposed to be able to put your personal kind of beliefs aside to work with the client who's in front of you and their beliefs and their values, and so that's. I took that very seriously. I think I made a lot of missteps, especially at the beginning of myself, you know, as I did that work of recognizing my own biases. So I'm not by any means saying, oh yeah, from day one I had it all figured out, but these were things that I was noticing and as I noticed them, I started, yeah, kind of questioning how I was doing some of my practice as well as what I would see some of my colleagues doing.
Speaker 2:And then there's some very clear ways that this shows up, um, with religious therapists in particular, and and it's a it's a dilemma because what we know from the research is that many people feel more comfortable seeing a therapist, or even a clergy member um, for their personal problems that comes from their own religion or that comes from their own worldview. So you know, jewish folks might be more adept to look for a Jewish therapist, right. Or Christian folks might be looking for a Christian counselor or a pastoral counselor, which is usually the combination of an ecclesiastical leader plus a mental health practitioner. Lds folks are usually going to be more comfortable with an LDS therapist. So the problem with that that makes sense on the one hand the problem with it is that then the clients are not adept in knowing when those ethical boundaries are being crossed, and that's our responsibility as clinicians. But then I've seen so many clinicians in a sense be in an act at that as well that that's where I think harm happens without really anybody noticing it. You know, not the client nor the clinician.
Speaker 1:There's so many, it's like until until I hear the stories later in my office and I'm like wow, that doesn't sound like that was great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, therapeutic help well it's like blind spots on blind spots was just, it's me, it's not additive, it's multiplicative. And then they're like why aren't I, why isn't my problems getting? Like I don't feel better, like well, I think there's a couple things at play, but it's like interesting too, because I remember I had a friend who their dad was getting married and they weren't excited about what was about to happen. I was kind of telling my therapist at the time about it. I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But I think it was fine, because she ended up officiating the wedding. And she's like wait what? I was like, yeah, yeah, the guy's therapist officiated a wedding. She's like do you know what's wrong with that? I was like what do you mean? She's like do you know what duality is? And I was like refresher, just running past me really quick. She's like yeah, like I am your therapist, I am not your friend. Like, even if I see you in public, I cannot recognize you as such unless you recognize Not everybody acts as good.
Speaker 1:I mean, the easiest parallel is like when I went on my mission it was like oh, everybody's a good missionary, everybody does perfect.
Speaker 1:We're all like singing hymns and holding hands. And then you get out there and you're like, oh no, the bell curve still exists. And I mean, unfortunately, I've had similar experiences in other fields via professional life, when I did some market research for medical providers and there was a guy I was doing some market research with him and I would always Google the person just to see their face because I'd be listening and then taking notes. And then I see this thing was like Dr So-and-so had license removed for three years after cutting out wrong kidney and I was like, huh, yeah, I think it's going to be really good. But yeah, I mean like, and it's hard because a lot of these people I mean especially if, again, like these mental health and biases, where I mean a lot of those religious roots run so deep that you sometimes don't even know that blind spot even exists and is like probably like so much more part of your identity than being a clinician that it's probably takes more of the control than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, and I mean that's why ethics is super important. We're supposed to get continuing education in ethics. You know so many hours every three years. However, at the same time, you know, as I've gone to many ethics conferences and CEs there's not a lot of information about religion and religion interplay. You know a lot of information about religion and religion interplay. You know, a lot of times ethics are about confidentiality or dual relationships or don't have sex with your clients. You know like that. That's not surprising. We have to repeat that almost every ethics conference.
Speaker 2:But you know so and I'm like, yeah, but what about these religious biases? You know so and I'm like, yeah, but what about these religious biases? You know that tend to crop up pretty, pretty regularly. We're doing better. You know, with ethics around like systemic racism and you know being affirmative of, you know, lgbtq plus populations, that even things like that, that you think even back when I was getting trained in the 1990s, those things were in our ethical proceedings back then. We still struggle with as a profession to show up in spaces where we're not discriminating in one way or another. I don't think it's possible for any of us clinicians to be bias free. I don't think that's possible. What I do think is possible is for us to be consistently alert to those biases, being open instead of being defensive when we're called out on those, and continue to do the work of improving ourselves throughout our careers yeah it's like taking a dose of your own medicine.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, I love that and I also love I kind of want to come back to the point about, I mean taking your practice more seriously, I mean especially seriously and showing up as the best you can, without biases of your own, which led to you eventually moving to Utah because of it, because I mean I was in was it 2020 or 2021 when everything happened? As far as my explication from the church, that's 2021. Okay, yeah, because I don't want to talk about a ton, because there's, I mean, so much, so many articles.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've done so many podcast interviews talking about it, but, um, I mean essentially it's like you standing up for your own practice and belief and what you knew was right, based on, I mean, social studies and research, and standing by that which is, I mean, I mean admirable, especially when I mean a lot of people, to your point, would see those biases like oh no, maybe I'll be quiet here, maybe.
Speaker 1:I won't stand up for yourself, but you really use it as a platform to do what you knew or thought was right, even if it didn't end up or ended up with these repercussions that ended up happening, whether you want them to happen or not repercussions that ended up happening, whether you want them to happen or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that is an important thing to touch on because it's the end of an arc, a very long journey for me, and I think sometimes, as therapists, some of us are trained with this kind of like blank slate approach Don't share much about your own beliefs, don't share about anything about your politics, don't make your public opinions public, because then that will, in a sense, maybe affect the people who are coming in to see you and they don't feel like they can be open with you about whatever things because of those positions being known.
Speaker 2:So, on the one hand, I understand that, but on the other hand, there is some ethics around us as clinicians seeing trends, seeing things that are also being seen in the research, and if we don't speak up and say, hey, this is actually kind of harmful practice or these, these issues, you know, these particular things could lead to some negative results. I feel like there's an advocacy component about being a clinician as well. Social workers definitely have that in their ethics to be advocates for social justice. Those of us in other fields may don't have that quite as much in our ethics, but it's still something to be considering is how are we showing up politically, legally and as advocates for mental health as a whole? And so, yes, none of my ideas were mine. It's not like my support for gay rights. It's not like I came up with gay rights ideas. However, when I did so much of the research, when I would see so many LGBTQ plus folks coming through my office, really suffering suicidal, having so much family ostracization, especially from conservative religious backgrounds, lds land included I could see the impact that was happening for people when we take certain stances within religious communities. For people, when we take certain stances within religious communities like being gay is a sin or acting gay is a sin, which is still the case in many conservative Christian sects that we have here in the United States and so that has a cost If we're going to see through the lens of God and through the lens of gospel in this particular way that harms such a large segment of our population. Sure, I can just do the triage work, you know, and just sit there in my office quietly and try one by one to see each person that maybe I can help and maybe offer them some different perspectives and some different research and resources at the same time, like where's all this bleeding coming from? And that's a more systemic issue.
Speaker 2:So I did decide to be more public about my positions through my blog. I called it at the time. I called it the mormon therapist, and so I would start talking about some of these issues. I'm like know, the way that we talk about these things in our religious circles may have consequences to mental health, relational health, sexual health, spiritual health that either we're not addressing or we're ignoring, and I'm not sure that we can ethically do that anymore. And so, yes, I spoke in particular for the support of gay rights and how important that is for the mental and relational health of so many of our community members, really seen as normative sexual behavior from childhood on by the pediatric association, by you know so many different associations, and even seen, as you know, from the World Health Organization, a personal privacy issue like a personal right.
Speaker 2:And yet we have so many people that feel very, very guilty, very shameful now, are identified maybe as addicts, even because they can't control a natural aspect of human behavior which is not meant to be controlled. It's kind of like trying to feel guilty for every time you feel hungry you know it's a natural drive and because you're not adhering to a certain standard, now you are not worthy, you're not good, you're evil, you're perverse, all these things. And then you take into account a developmental mind. So a lot of these messages are being doled out at fairly young ages, especially like in our LDS tradition. You start getting asked these questions as early as 11, 12 in regards to what's called the law of chastity in our tradition and I'm seeing these teenagers coming into my office.
Speaker 2:You know, self-harming, suicidal, depressed, anxious, scrupulous and when I really kind of figure out what's going on. Not always, but at the heart of many, it was this masturbatory shame that felt like something they couldn't control. They really saw themselves as very, very pernicious and evil in the sight of their God. So how is that even affecting their spiritual health, and why are we imposing this as adults, who, I believe, should know better you know in 2020, why we should know better of the effects that this could have on a developmental person's journey that then can have lifelong effects, whether sexual health or their sexual relationships, whether or not they can enjoy sex with a partner, um and so, yes, I spoke about that too. So, again, not my ideas. I mean, these are ideas. This is research and I'm sharing advocate.
Speaker 1:That you know and you want to be, and I end up, you know.
Speaker 2:So then the church or churches have a difficult position when they have kind of this wrestle, which I think has been a centuries, if not millennial wrestle. Are we going to pick the side of science or are we going to pick the side of tradition and what we believe God has told us right? And so, even as something as simple as whether or not the world is round or flat, you know that was a big deal a long time ago and that was seen as heresy to say that the world was round, and for a lot of people that was like religious blasph for somebody to say that's not scientifically correct anymore and people's people who had those ideas suffered tremendously. They wouldn't just get excommunicated, get killed and so um. So that's a wrestle that's happened forever and I think sometimes we forget that again.
Speaker 2:It's very easy to look back thousands of years and go well, those religious people just didn't really quite have the light that we as religious people definitely do that, and it's interesting to me how we can't correlate that maybe there's some things within our own religious biases that we may have wrong too and we hide behind what I call the skirts of God, because it's like well, god says so. So I can't change my mind, regardless of what science says even though we have all changed dramatically what we think religious, you know what was religiously motivated or justified a thousand years ago about women, about slavery, about all kind we've we've changed dramatically. We no longer say, oh well, that, but god says it's okay to rape your wife, and so you know, we, we've changed our mind about that somehow. Yeah right, we've developed a little bit. Yes, that we have, we've developed.
Speaker 2:So I just think it's always interesting how we as humans and me included, it's difficult to look at ourselves and our current beliefs through the lens of I might not have this all figured out, and I think religion in particular has a tendency to lean towards certainty, and that we do have it all figured out because, after all, we've got god on our side, whereas science it's science doesn't get it all right either. We've had atrocities through science, as far as you know, lobotomies and all kinds of things that happen to people through kind of scientific lens. However, where that leans is really in challenging the current tradition and trying to find new ways and better ways. And you're rewarded for that.
Speaker 1:You're going to get a Nobel Peace Prize if you prove somebody else wrong, yeah, whereas in religious circles, you're going to get disciplined if you're trying to prove especially ecclesiastical leaders wrong, yes, wrong, yes, and it's like that's one thing I've been thinking about a lot, too is like I have, because I love arguing, in a sense of sharing beliefs, thinking through things and unifying each other, not necessarily like you're wrong, I'm right.
Speaker 1:Here's where we're gonna fight, just just like learning from other people's points of views, and while I mean I have a lot of religious friends, a lot of lds friends, it's always interesting because, like one thing I've always tried to prove to people was like especially against like a religious belief and being like, oh well, I mean, whether it's abortion, lgbtq, right, it's like gay marriage, whatever, what I've realized is you can never go against someone's belief in god because for them, to overcome that, then they would have to overcome their belief in god, which is so strong and palpable that like, okay, okay, like we can't go anywhere else here I'm not going to just yell at a brick wall and go through the definition of insanity for my own ego.
Speaker 2:It's a trump card, Exactly when you pull out the God card it's a trump card.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And so so you go through this experience, um, I mean to your point of when you go against a religious entity, especially ecclesiastical leaders's usually discipline involved, which led to, I mean your own excommunication, um, and then correlating, moving to utah and then to help, I mean with a lot of, I mean continuing in your practice of I mean sexual health, religious transitioning, um, uh, I mean marital help as well. I mean, did that just add like a lot of fuel to your fire or like kind of want to be more specific in kind of these LDS dynamics in Utah, or how did that change your point of view of of what you wanted to do in your role in it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I obviously I did not want to be excommunicated. I felt, like you know, I valued my membership in the church and I also valued my critical thinking skills from my education and I felt like those two things could go hand in hand. Not everybody agreed with that, so I felt like I was already doing the work that I wanted to do. I was already working with lots of people I wanted to do. I was already working with lots of people.
Speaker 2:I mean, we know that this is kind of like nationwide and even global trends that people are becoming less affiliated with religious organizations. That doesn't necessarily mean that people are less affiliated with spirituality or that they don't believe spirituality is important in their lives, but less adherence to being part of an organization. And so we're seeing some numbers kind of decrease in almost all age groups older age groups not as much, but definitely younger age groups in how they affiliate with religion in general. And that's happening within the LDS church as well. And so I felt like, as a good clinician, I should be able to sit with an LDS believer just as much as I should be able to sit with an LDS or, you know, post Mormon and offer them good clinical work regardless, that I should be able to understand the values and the beliefs of either people, and so I was already doing a lot of mixed-faith marriage work. For example, that's a huge issue that we're currently having here in Utah that mixed-faith marriages are on the increase, as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2:And when you have one person leaving a religious tradition and one person feeling very confused or betrayed or worried about that. That is a moment for any relationship where you're going to have some struggles. And what does this mean for us? What does this mean for our parenting? What does this mean for our values and our path forward and our path forward and what does this mean for us, even within the construct of having, in, in lds language, a celestial marriage? You know what does this mean for the afterlife. Even so, these are really hard, heart-wrenching.
Speaker 2:You know things that are happening in these marriages and I always felt very strongly that, um, granted, there's lots of reasons why people separate and divorce, but I would, I would hope that this wouldn't be the one reason why people would say, well, we're no longer compatible. It could be figure out a way to have a successful mixed faith relationship and many people do have that and are very capable of that, especially when given skills and strategies and, you know, can normalize the situation for them and say, look, you're not the only ones in this position, etc. So I was already doing mixed faith work with families and marriages. I was already supporting people who wanted to leave the church and understand, even though I didn't want to leave the church. I could understand why people would, especially again if there's been some harm LGBTQ folks in particular, a lot of people who identify as women with feminist issues and just not feeling like they're being treated equally or fairly, and that would be things. There's all kinds of reasons why people become affiliated, disaffiliated, historical reasons, social justice reasons, and so I could handle that. I could handle, whereas some of the stories I was hearing from people is like, for example, this was not an LDS couple but an evangelical couple who said that their evangelical therapist, who was seeing them as mixed faith husband, was leaving their church and the white was not.
Speaker 2:And as they were leaving a couple session, the wife was asked to just stay back for a few minutes and this evangelical therapist said look to tell you the truth. I don't think that it's good for you to stay with somebody who's not aligned with God. That is not ethical, no Right. That is imposing your religious beliefs onto a couple's marriage. They have children. That's blowing up, or potentially blowing up something very tender and that's very complex. And now one person's religious bias is, you know, not that just because the therapist said it, that they would do it, but it's influencing.
Speaker 1:Especially like an ecclesiastical leader like that that has.
Speaker 2:Well, she wasn't an ecclesiastical leader, she was a therapist. Got it Right. Ecclesiastical leaders will do this too. Yes, of course I. I they're not under the same ethics, exactly. So I guess you can do an ethical things that I would, that I would consider an ethical as an ecclesiastical leader, like, say, oh, you should leave your spouse, and I've heard that too, and I've also heard of many ecclesiastical leaders who are very supportive of mixed faith relationships. So that's, that's an example. Another example I would say you know, I had a transgender person who said, yeah, I went to what was supposedly an affirming therapist they were saying I'm LGBTQ affirming and then when they brought up, you know, I've really been heard in the church, you know and started talking about those kinds of issues and the types of discriminations that they felt in the church.
Speaker 2:This therapist got very defensive about the church. This is an LDS therapist and you know just saying, well, but no, the church is really good. Some people in the church maybe are not great and really missing the systemic issues that have been happening with gender messages around gender in particular, that are very harmful to our transgender members who are LDS. So then they're coming to me and telling me how upsetting this session with this therapist was because they felt so unseen, so non-validated, um, etc.
Speaker 1:So those are just a few examples of how these things show up. Yeah and like, yeah, like, because I've gone through my faith transition and I mean that was I mean any like anybody who goes through it. It's, it's a whirlwind of life, like going from eternal perspective to I mean you can keep that, but everything is now up for discussion. You feel like you're on your own, but you've never been able to trust yourself in that same way. And now you're like the only one going through that. And then you have to navigate family dynamics, friend dynamics. Oh, all of a sudden, the ward friends aren't showing up in the same way and they're looking at you differently. Like it changes your entire life and looking at you differently.
Speaker 2:it changes your entire life, it does it does. So, going back to your question, as far as the work I was doing before versus after my excommunication, I don't really see my work being much different, other than I think what the church did or was trying to do, and probably was successful in doing, by excommunicating me. What does that mean? They're really discrediting me. They're discrediting me as right. They're discrediting me as a professional. So if you're a believing member of the church, you're going to look at Natasha Helfer and go well, but she was excommunicated. Why would I go to an excommunicated member who might lead me astray, who might give me bad advice?
Speaker 1:It's almost like this Mormon scarlet letter that was placed on you, sure, so I do find that I still work with mixed-faith couples quite a bit.
Speaker 2:I work with Katie and Ellen Mount, who run Marriage on a Tightrope. They do an excellent job. It's a podcast for mixed-faith couples in particular, where they really have tried very carefully and intentionally to allow both people to have their side, their voice, their, their hurts, their concerns and and I love working with them because that's what I believe in you know giving both people the right to their belief systems.
Speaker 1:You know, a believer has a right to be a believer and a non-believer has a right to be a non-believer, and then how are they going to manage that as a couple?
Speaker 2:and when you have skills and support and help, that can go much more smoothly than when you're being told kind of ridiculous things or or feel like you know, oh, we're doing something wrong. So I work with them on that project, I I probably. It probably has opened me up more Again. I was working with issues like not issues, but themes like non-monogamy transgender folks when I was an LDS therapist. So I didn't it's not like, oh, I'm LDS, I can't deal with that presentation, that would be unethical, so I need to be able to put my own standards or beliefs aside. So now you know, even though it's discredited me, it also has opened up new avenues where I'm more able to speak freely, to talk, you know, to talk more, even more about things that I think are important, especially in the field of sexuality and sexual health and the wide variety of folks that show up in ways that are very different than maybe the standards of one church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that and I like that you're in the quote trenches of it all, because it is a lot of hard conversations, there's a lot to deal with and it is a lot of help that people really do need in that moment, even though LGBTQ and other minorities and groups in general with and it is a lot of of help that people really do need in that moment, even though, like lgbtq and other um minorities and groups in general, like everybody needs someone who doesn't have that bias, who can show up for who they need them to be and help them through this process. Like I can't imagine going through anything like that. Have my therapist be like well, but not like that. Like no, I don't think you're right or I have. That's not what I think.
Speaker 1:I mean it doesn't necessarily need to be religious, but whatever bias that could be that comes in and has gotten tough and and I love that, like the topics that you cover because a lot of them are so relevant in Utah right now, I mean I think I think everybody, no matter if you're LDS, non-lds, post-mormon, never Mormon you do see these trends in a like religious participation is down and people are seeking for a community outside of a religious organization, I mean even within Utah.
Speaker 1:I mean you see church numbers going down and now the LDS population is no longer the majority in Salt Lake City, and so it's interesting to see these trends happen. But also, I mean a lot of the things that are happening and have happened play a large impact into the landscape of mental health here, and so I guess I mean kind of diving into that a little bit more. I mean, how do you see what happens in Salt Lake and broader Utah are so different from the mental health perspectives and the drivers of those, compared to other places that you maybe lived, worked or have colleagues?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I I actually do see a lot of similarities between what I call, you know, the Bible Belt and the Book of Mormon Belt, but where we see some very stark differences is in areas outside of that. One very stark example is this issue of and I'll put it in air quotes porn and sex addiction. That's not really something, you know. If you're talking to somebody in New York who's offering mental health services and you're like, hey, I need help with porn and sex addiction, they're going to look at you like wait, what are you really talking about? Like that's not really a thing, whereas, of course, here in Utah and Wichita, kansas and Nebraska, you've got entire centers centered around this type of treatment approach, you know and so that's why I get very passionate is, I feel, like my community that I come from. I'm not going to say I'm a communicator or not. I still consider it my community. So my community is vulnerable to approaches to mental health, especially sexual health, that are just not based in evidence-based research and science, and so we have a lot more anxiety around sexuality in these communities. We have a lot of different standards about how people should behave sexually, and that gets conflated with illness If you're not following the standards of the church. There must be something wrong with you, you must be sick, whereas really it's like you know, I I mean just to give an example. I mean, like, orthodox jewish folks, um, don't believe in eating pork right, and many of us wouldn't even think twice about that. And so if somebody's struggling with that in the orthodox jewish community and they're like, oh, just, really, every month I have a pork sandwich and I really shouldn't be doing that, the rest of the world would be like, oh, you have a pork addiction. They'd be like, oh, you're having a struggle with your kind of orthodox beliefs, um, matching your lived human behavior. So that's, that's a struggle, that's real, that's important to that person. But we're not going to now name it a pork addiction.
Speaker 2:And that's what happens basically within these communities, not just in LDS land but in conservative you know kind of religious spaces is we have this propensity to, in particular, pathologize sexuality. We did that with homosexuality for a long time here in Utah and in other places. I believe it was a mental health disorder, even in the science books until the 1970s. Wow. So science has improved right, science has been challenged. Science rewards challenge. But in these religious communities. There's this double down effect. No, we're, we're going to double down, we're really serious. This is not okay behavior. And then we're going to. And then what I think is really um, complicit is when lds or Christian therapists basically go along with religion and say this is so wrong, but now we're going to put a clinical label to it as well.
Speaker 1:And especially when I mean we touched on a little bit when you're talking about masturbation and shame, especially in a religious context not necessarily has to be in LDS context, but most very conservative religions will do so and then you pair that with um, I mean like these, like the shame of pornography and calling it an addiction. And all of this is usually done during some of those like forming years of someone's life, and it's usually during those adolescent years where I mean, during that time, you are still downloading the world around you and how to perceive it and how you fit into it and to be automatically deemed as like, oh hey, by the way, there's something terribly wrong with you. You have to go see someone for this because you have a problem, and to have that be placed on your identity and not know what to do with it, I mean that's hard, very difficult, and you don't have the developmental maturity to really know how to manage or deal with that.
Speaker 2:You just really are. What you're downloading is that there's something really inherently wrong with me, and not only is mommy mad at me or my bishop is mad at me, but the all-knowing, all-seeing God is mad at me. So there's no escape from this kind of internal judgment that gets internalized, and that's so much of the work that we're doing in uncovering shame and working with internalized shame. Um, for many times you know years to undo that kind of internalization that does happen at very young ages.
Speaker 1:Because I have so many friends and acquaintances that I mean still struggle with it to this day, like they went through this process in their adolescence, in four years, and it still plagues them. They still don't think they're like a good person or normal quote unquote but they were told that at one point especially like to like the examples you use. I mean, if you go through this like shame process, it's like let's just go for sake of the arguments, like the les perspective of it, like your parents are going to shame you until you go talk to the bishop. The bishop's going to probably shame you and they are probably going to say some or quote some. Talk to the bishop. The bishop's going to probably shame you and they're probably going to say some or quote some scriptures and talks. Which then affirms like oh, the religious leaders and God is looking down at me. But hey, let's go see a professional. And now this professional is now saying the same thing if it's someone that comes from that same religious background. And all of a sudden everyone.
Speaker 2:Everybody around you is complicit in this idea that there's something genuinely inherently wrong with you, because maybe you masturbate once a week or once a month or even once a day and you might be curious about explicit materials, which is actually very normative behavior.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying people need to love explicit materials or need to agree with watching explicit materials, but to make it an illness when that doesn't even really exist clinically, then that really becomes the problem and where I think a lot of therapists are doing harm and um and like I run a male sexual shame group specifically for folks who have gone through these 12-step programs or, you know, sex addiction programs.
Speaker 2:The lds church has come up with kind of their own 12-step program in the last, I'd say, 20 years or so and the amount of both rage and actual sobbing that happens in that group of mine and these men who are working through this type of shame in their 30s, 40s, 50s is extremely humbling for me to be a part of that. But that also speaks to the internalized damage and how oftentimes that internalized shame does lead to non-adaptive behaviors like secrecy, betrayal, hiding, you know, which can affect their spouses right, because they've learned from an early age. You either stuff this in and don't let anybody know about it, because you'll be extremely punished or divorced or you won't be able to date the person you want to date.
Speaker 1:So you just see your family.
Speaker 2:Super secret, or you become kind of like a serial confessor, which then has its own implications too. About, you know, like you're saying too. About you know, like you're saying, just putting yourself consistently into these spaces where people tell you you are not living to a certain standard, that you should be living anytime. We're shitting on ourselves.
Speaker 1:That's not a great space to be on for internalized shame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we talked about it when we walked in, but, like a lot of people don't even realize that I mean salt lake city, utah, and utah is right, slap dab right in the middle of the suicide belt in the Rocky Mountains, and so I mean you could say argue causation versus correlation, kind of like the drivers that we've talked about, but regardless, we're in a place that has a higher predisposition to, I mean, suicide, which I mean goes down the whole funnel of suicide, mental health, I mean, like you alluded to, of anxiety and all of these myriad of issues that play such a huge issue.
Speaker 1:I mean part in, I mean, our personal lives, whether it's us personally or someone that we know, or someone that we care about, or a spouse or family member, whatever that might be. And it's and it's always interesting because, like we see all these studies recently, it's like, oh, men are the loneliest they've ever been, people have the least amount of close connections that they've ever had, and it's so easy to look at that like, oh, yeah, but not my friends or not me or not anybody else. But you realize you're like, oh, like everybody is kind of going through this in their own way and to assume that no one I know is is a dangerous road to be on until something like terrible happens and then you have to look yourself and be like, oh, like and I'm not saying you could have saved someone or you could have done something, but I always I know the people, I care about the people in my circle. I always try to do a mental check-in every now and then just make sure everyone's doing okay yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:It is complicated. Suicide is a complicated topic. It's usually multifaceted. Uh, there's some research to show that for some reason, higher altitude places in the world tend to trend to have a higher rate of suicidality, and I think a lot of people like to just blame that only and say no, no, it's not all these policies that we have or these legal things we have, for example, for lgbtq plus folks, that non-affirming spaces um will increase suicide rates by like five to ten times, right and depending, especially if you're transgender, versus gay, versus transgender communities at most risk for this.
Speaker 2:Um, and we just passed here in Utah horrific legislation around gender issues, around who can use a bathroom. So it would not be surprising to me that this you know rates unfortunately increase, in particular for that population because they're living in a space where they're not supported and they're actually afraid. I've had people tell me I'm afraid to travel because if I'm going to go into Southern Utah and I have to go to the bathroom, am I going to be accosted? So, and I've heard of people even moving from Utah because of these reasons I have, I have a transgender child myself who moved from Utah specifically because just not feeling safe. Um, so those are very, very difficult issues, I think too.
Speaker 2:Um, another thing that is usually very typical in these high demand religious corridors is this relationship with perfectionism and, you know, trying to be a certain standard.
Speaker 2:So we we definitely have research here. That, for example, where I think only second to areas in california for plastic surgery for, you know, wanting to look a certain way. So there's a lot of pressure to look a certain way, to be a certain way, to present a certain way. I think this in particular, um affects people in female bodies, and so this pressure to you know, be considered beautiful or be considered the perfect mother, uh, to have to somehow love mothering, to have the perfect home and have everything in order, can really put a huge burden of again feeling like I'm not enough, you know, in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:So we know that we have a lot of antidepressants being prescribed here, sometimes in more rates than in other states, um, so there's a lot of factors, right, there's a lot of factors, right, there's a lot of factors. And we also know that there's pretty good I'm not sure if specific research or anecdotal research, but that you know. Here in LDS, in the LDS quarter, we have general conference twice a year, which is the meeting where the main leaders of the church will speak, and for, pretty consistently, for the last, like I would say, 10 years, there's been anti-LGBTQ messaging, there's been anti-doubt messaging.
Speaker 2:So if you're a doubter if you're leaving the church. There's a lot of messages that in a way, put families in kind of a predicament, because now it's like you're being told not to trust people who leave the church, or you're being told not to pay attention to people who leave the church, so people who if that's your husband or your mother or your son- now all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:There can be some real difficulty there, and we know that the suicide hotlines receive more calls on those weekends than any other weekends interesting throughout the year. So there there is there are issues amiss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's so interesting because, like it's hard, because I mean one of my friends, for example, they had, I mean, went to a faith transition, ended up leaving the church and it was hard for them because, like, they always wanted to share, like why?
Speaker 2:not necessarily trying to be like mom.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to tell you why you shouldn't do this anymore. But like I just want to be understood because I don't want to look at the look down as this, like enigma, or like this I mean second class citizen. But then it's hard and like that's one thing that like if I would implore I mean active members of the lds church is like just listen to the story, like hear people out, because I mean we're all trying to act with good intent. No one is trying to like destroy the world or make the world a terrible place. Obviously there's exceptions, all that. But we all want what's right for us, we want what's right for our communities, we want what's right for our loved ones, and that can only happen or in a relationship, really with good communication.
Speaker 1:And so I know it's hard for a lot of people who are active to say because, again, like there's so many themes of doubt, so many themes of like, oh, they leave because of this or this is why they do that, and it's like, oh, no, actually, if you ask me I would tell you why. But if you're going to trust them in front instead of like your friend, mother, son, whatever that relationship might be, like that's hard to have to have that place in front of them, and so I think something is similar, as simple as is hearing someone out, hearing their story is is a good thing to listen to. And again, like it doesn't have to be these details of like guess what I found out about joseph smith, but being like hey, like there's some things that didn't make sense, that doesn't align with my values and like the experiences that I've had in my life, and so I went down a road and I did a lot of digging and I found out it wasn't for me. It's not like well, I thought alcohol would be fun or like sitting is really cool and I don't want to do this Like it's.
Speaker 1:And so I think there's there's definitely a room for a lot and just an olive branch between the two groups, because there's always a lot of friction in Utah. I always joke that there's only three types of people in Utah there's Mormons, ex-mormons and Californians, and so with like the Mormons and ex-Mormons, like it's, there's always this friction and like sometimes it's more passionate than others and and sometimes a little more passive, but there is kind of this like unspoken friction that I don't think needs to necessarily happen and there's a lot of room for improvement is accepting both groups of people and moving on in our prospective lives without telling someone like oh, you can't leave the church alone, or you can't leave me alone.
Speaker 2:And it just doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1:So I think there's room for improvement on everyone to just relax but at the same time, accept people for who they are and not just what their religious belief might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it just reminds me of the song like can't we all get along? And I mean, I think we have to note that we are all humans. None of us escape that reality.
Speaker 2:And group dynamics really are at play. And if you think, if you educate yourself on things like group think and group dynamics, it's, it's very common to other other people and this tends to be more the case the more high demand of culture is, and that can be true in politics, that can be true in religion, that can be true in politics, that can be true in religion, that can be true in cultural. You know arguments. So it's not a religious-only problem, but it definitely is something that we see here a lot and I agree there's a lot of assumptions being made, there's a lot of ignoring or kind of like gentle ostracizing I say gentle because you know there are religious communities like the Amish that you know formally ostracize a person from ever being able to see their family again.
Speaker 2:If there are differences of beliefs, we don't have a great track record as humans of getting along with people with different beliefs than ours, and that's a problem. Yes, you can see. I mean that's what causes wars. Millions of people die. Yes, right, so that's sad and I do think we have an opportunity here, in particular in this regional area, to do more all of branching between faith communities, between non-faith communities, and where I see some lacking in that is really from the top echelon of the LDS church. I think that there's lots of people on the ground you know grassroots movements even amongst LDS folks that are very much trying to do interfaith community work. But again, when top leaders every six months give messages that are very provocative and very non branch, for me that that could be a real problem because they're seen as the spokespeople of god himself yeah, like even my oldest sister, um, active lds, mother of three, she I was talking to her today.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, what are you up to today? She's like, oh well, we'll get kids out the door. But then I have my like bible study with my mixed faith group. I was like, wait, hold on what she's like. Oh, yeah, this bible study where there's like, I mean, gardeners, uh, garden variety of, uh, different faiths and we all come and sit and talk about her perspective. Like that is so great, like thank you so much for doing this, because they're, yeah, it's so good to understand, even like again, even within the subset of religion, of christianity, of how different that can be and how pigeonhole people can be in their own communities and not want to branch out.
Speaker 2:Like there's so much more in common than you think. We have so much more in common as humans than we do different. But boy, are we focused on what's different and and that's a primal response, that's a that's a self-protective response. When there's a difference, it could mean danger. It's like the deer in the woods, and all of a sudden they hear that twig snapping and all of a sudden they're alert. And they're, they're looking around what could happen. And so we we have to learn how to get past some of those primal responses and get more into relational, intelligent responses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause, to your point, like all of these almost freeze, fight or flight reactions that we have for survival at one point very valuable, kept us alive. Humans are doing great, but there's also like and like one of my like, personal beliefs and probably a little bit more, um, uh, I don't know the word, but more fringy, let's say. It is like I've found, as we believe, like since let's call it the industrial revolution to now, we've tried to evolve so much but we haven't been able to have that like consistent time of millions of thousands, of billions of years before, from the end of thoughts and now. But now we have to go through this conscious mental evolution to realize that, oh, all of these things that we've been predisposed to follow and these triggers in our brains aren't doing what we need them to do. Because, at the same time, like if you were to put, uh, I mean, let's use a cute animal, I don't know why my brain's going towards raccoon, but we're gonna go with raccoon. Um, if you put a raccoon in a box with, like all of these like ads and flashing lights and expectations, like it's gonna freak out.
Speaker 1:And so, again, like with humans, because we've been forced into all of these different scenarios and changes to like our species. We're starting to freak out a little bit and like part of that is hey, we have to like, normalize what like. These responses aren't the same that you need to which historically, with like evolution, it's been consistent because it's been over time, it's been through generations and generations of uh, of people coming through it. But now I feel like it's this almost personal responsibility people have to take. They go. I need to do the work. I need to understand who I'm at, I understand what my triggers are and where I'm going, but it takes, I mean, identification of those things, willingness to do it and willingness to change, to do make that happen. But it is worth it 10 times out of 10. Or I'll say 9 times out of 10. So it's yeah, we're in an interesting time of human history.
Speaker 2:We are definitely in an interesting time. Yes, Some of these things were more helpful. We were fighting saber-toothed tigers in our own spouses or family.
Speaker 1:Yes, although we've been fighting them for historical. You know decades as well. You pick up any historical book and you'll find there's a quote from uh will smith I liked I mean this was probably 10, 15 years ago, but I think it was accepting an award, maybe. I mean I can't remember. But he said there's two things that I always do it's read and run.
Speaker 1:Reading, because all of our problems have been solved before, for the most part we just got to go remember how we did in the past. And two, running, because there's a voice in the back of your head that tells you to stop. And if you can keep running and ignore it, then you can pretty much do anything in life. And so, again, we just need to keep learning and realize, like, because again you pick up like a, I mean the history of benjamin franklin, the history of alexander the great, the history like whatever geography, time, whatever, these things are still going to evolve. Like there were still religious wars then, there's still religious wars now and we keep finding ourselves in these cycles of problems. But again we just need to realize it's. We're not at that place anymore, but it can't happen as broadly as we'd like. Yeah, so I mean, natasha, thank you so much. I always end with two questions for all the guests.
Speaker 2:Firstly, if you could have someone on the Small Lake City podcast and hear more about their story and what they're up to. Who would you want to hear from Wow? I could give you so many cool people. I've heard a lot from her. I consider her a friend, but you should have Lisa Diamond on. That's an excellent person. You should have Braxton Detson on. You should have Kristen Hodson on.
Speaker 1:There's just so many wonderful people here that are so exciting and interesting and doing fabulous work. I agree it's a great place to start. And then, secondly, if people want to find out more about the work you're doing, your practice, I mean, what's the best place to find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the best place to find me is either natashahelfercom or my group practice is Symmetry Counseling and you can find us at symcounselingcom and we really do work in that intersect. We specialize really in that intersection between mental health, religious transitions or religious journeys and sexuality and so many things fall into those categories. I mean we see general mental health issues as well and depression, anxiety, ptsd, etc. But it's hard sometimes to find a place that really specializes in those intersections. So we're we're really specialized, we're really I'm really proud of so many of the providers I've trained.
Speaker 2:We are also currently um starting ketamine services through our practice, which is so interesting to see how the world of psychedelics and um things can really shift kind of um specifically things that are stuck in our thinking, which is so much about what therapy is about is trying to get unstuck in the way that we currently think. And the you know things like ketamine and other other substances as well have really been shown to help us kind of remove our almost like consciousness. Just associate from this for a second, yes, and gives you a break and gives you a different perspective.
Speaker 2:And I just saw in the news that MDMA and psilocybin are being approved here in the state of Utah for use of hospitals for now for hospitals and university hospitals, and so that's really interesting to see how that is going to really transform a lot of what we do in different therapeutic approaches. So we're really proud at symmetry, counseling, to be kind of, you know, involved in this, in this ketamine journey, and helping people have not just not just the medical component like a lot of places you just go in and get the ketamine infusions or injections or however it's administered but to really have the guiding and the integration work and the intentional work that is so to take advantage of that new neuroplasticity that your brain is taking, you know, is having this experience. It can last for months, even after a ketamine session, and the research is really showing that when you, when you combine the two, it's not just the medicine, it's not just the therapy, but as usual it's both at the same time that your effects are so much, uh, better and and last or longer lasting, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's interesting to see, because I mean there's so much interesting research in, like the preliminary findings of. I mean it's funny, like to put in the context of war on drugs, where it's like, hey, we lost, but we found some interesting things out that we're going to benefit from, and so, um, I think there's a. The one documentary that always comes to mind for me is like psychonauts, I think, where he talks about all of the medical applications of, of psychedelics. So, if you're curious, lots of good research out there.
Speaker 2:Dr Groff and I just saw him in a training so that, yeah, he's much older now but, boy, he was really involved in the initial research back in the you know 60s and 70s and really exciting work.
Speaker 2:One other shout out I want to give is to the Mormon Mental Health Association. So that's an association I founded about a decade ago and that's um a group of. It's a secular organization and it's really meant to attract therapists and clinicians who are working with lds or lds adjacent folks, post-mormons, flds you know kind of whole gamut and want to do so ethically and competently. So it doesn't matter if you come from LDS background yourself, but if you're working here as a therapist, you may want to get involved, because we offer very specific trainings on working with people who have had experiences or backgrounds in the Church of Jesus Christ, of Lesus christ, lottery saints and the flds cultures and and all different kinds of mormon adjacent spaces. So that's something I'm very proud of as well, because that's really trying to, you know, that's really trying to like challenge this. What I started out saying is like can we do good work within a religious community without imposing um healthy religious bias ourselves?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's like such a I love that. It's such a core value to you and you've done so much work around that. Yeah, I like. I like when people are ethical and competent.
Speaker 1:That's a good combination, the more organizations we can have that go towards uh competency. But that's great, natasha. This has been so great. I love your perspective, I love your, your background and everything that's that's led you to do all the great work that you're doing. Now, if you're someone who's going through a transition or need some help, there's so many great resources, um, so, reach out lots. A lot of life is a lot easier when you have professional help when you need it, and I'm speaking from experience on that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thank you, I love my work, I love Utah, I love the mountains, I love you. Know, we have such a beautiful diversity here in this state of geography and I'm concerned about our lake, I'm concerned about our air, but I really hope that we can get on top of those issues because I hope to live here until I'm a really old lady.
Speaker 1:I'm with you too. This is home until I'm not an active member of this planet anymore, and so I agree, we need to take care of everything that makes it great. We don't need to get rid of it just because we were bad stewards. Yes, awesome, well, thank you so much, natasha. It's been great. Great to know you and great to hear everything that you're working on. Thank you so much. This was lovely. Oh, thank you.