Posted by:
The 1st FreeAtLast
(
)
Date: August 17, 2014 04:20AM
From Prof. Joseph's article in Psychology Today Magazine 14 months ago:
"The Secret to a Contented Life - Unconditional positive self-regard
"Feeling good about ourselves is important to a contented life. But the secret to feeling good about ourselves is unconditional self-acceptance.
"As children we often develop what psychotherapists refer to as conditions of worth. Conditions of worth are the rules we learn in childhood for what we must do to be loved. For example, we learn that we must be attractive, popular, sporty, tidy, respectful, funny, or whatever in order to feel accepted. Everybody has their own unique combination of conditions of worth. For one person, it might be to please other people. For someone else it is to be the smart one. For another it is to always keep their feelings in check.
"Conditions of worth become deeply buried within us and we carry them around with us, even as adults. Without being aware of it we judge ourselves in terms of how well we live up to our conditions of worth. As a result, how good we feel about ourselves becomes conditional. We lose our ability to trust the evidence of our own senses and defer to the judgment of others.
"To truly feel good about ourselves we have to learn to be aware of our conditions of worth and let them go. The secret is to learn to value ourselves on our own terms, unconditionally.
"What this means is that we make our own choices about what our priorities in life are, what our values are and what rules to live by. So when we kick ourselves for not living up to some standard it is our standard, not us simply kicking ourselves on behalf of someone else.
"Unconditional self-regard doesn’t mean praising ourselves unrealistically. Rather the opposite, we have to be realistic about ourselves, both our strengths and our weaknesses.
"As the psychologist Carl Rogers pointed out, when we do accept ourselves for who we are, paradoxically we become free to change and grow psychologically."
(Ref.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-doesnt-kill-us/201306/the-secret-contented-life )
Cultic Mormonism 'programs' Latter-day Saints, from early childhood onward in most cases, to unconsciously buy into Mormon "conditions of worth" (there are a lot of them). In the dysfunctional LDS 'universe', at it were, leaving the mission field early without a very good reason (e.g., being near death) violates one of the Morg's "conditions of worth."
Stalwart, hard-working, always-sacrificing missionaries are praised by the Mormon 'tribe.' Lacklustre, ineffectual, emotionally-troubled, etc. mishies are not. Latter-day Saints of all ages are 'programmed' to judge themselves by externally-imposed LDS 'yardsticks,' not our own independently developed standards.
The challenge for your cousin is to be reject imposed Mormon "conditions of worth" and learn to fully accept herself unconditionally. Said differently, she needs to learn to love herself just as she is. As her friend, it certainly seems that you've been doing just that, which has no doubt been VERY helpful to her!
Here's info. about how Mormonism 'programs' people and affects their self-esteem that you might want to review and discuss with her:
http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/Psychotherapist Dr. Nathaniel Branden (in CA) has a lot of excellent info. on his website about self-esteem that may be of interest to your cousin:
http://www.nathanielbranden.com/At some point, you could tell your cousin that Steve Hassan, a licensed mental health professional in MA and one of America's leading experts on cults, lists the Mormon Church on his website as a thought-control organization:
https://freedomofmind.com//Info/infoDet.php?id=140If your cousin is inclined in the future to leave the LDS Church, she'll be in good company! In July 2013, the New York Times reported about Hans Mattson, an "area authority" for the church in Europe who "discovered credible evidence that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, was a polygamist and that the Book of Mormon and other scriptures were rife with historical anomalies." (Mattson left the church after spending his whole life in Mormonism.) (Ref.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?_r=0 )
You could also show your cousin the Jan. 2012 Reuters Special report "Mormonism besieged by the modern age" that said that LDS General Authority acknowledged to Latter-day Saints in Logan, Utah that people were leaving the church "in droves":
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/us-mormonchurch-idUSTRE80T1CM20120130Brian Dalton, the creator, writer, and director of the popular "Mr. Deity" YouTube program, explains in a video why he's a "Formon" (former Mormon) - it's kind of funny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfkHJmHYn6MGood luck!