Hi, I recently left the church after 22 years of membership. To be honest I have never been happier than I am now. I do not regret my decision and my resolve gets stronger with everything I study. My problem is that I am struggling to find motivation to do things that I had no problem doing before... specifically related to my schooling. Since I left the church I have seen a huge decline in my effort to get good grades. I don't know exactly what happened. It's not like I lost all hope for a happy life or anything. I love being where I am now (spiritually). If anyone has any tips or has been through something like this I would love to hear how you got through it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

. . . besides reinventing myself completely. ;-)

Fortunately, I was a stay-at-home mother with little ones, and so I didn't have a lot of deadlines. So I just read a LOT, and reevaluated basically everything that I thought or felt about everything.


Leaving the church is a big life change, and naturally it's going to affect other aspects of your life.

My advice would be to tough out your current term and do the best you can, because college is expensive and it affects your future. Then give yourself a break. Either take a lighter load or take the summer off school so you can deal with the changes.

And really take the time you need to think through your beliefs and clarify what you want in your life.

The first three months is always the worst, with the lowest of the slump hitting at the third month. From three to six months is when you should start feeling signs of the beginning of recovery. By six months things should be well on their way back to normal.

For a while, just take baby steps. Try to do something nurturing for yourself everyday. Get lots of rest, and a eat a nourishing diet. Add some mild exercise, like walking, to help clear your mind. Go to garage sales, where you can meet some new locals. Also, you may want to consult a therapist, if you don't pull out of the slump naturally.

Best wishes in your new life of freedom.

Big changes like that tend to make you feel rudderless but fear not, you already hold the tools to make it better.

The key is to cast about yourself and find the things that mean a lot to you, whether it's a hobby or a relationship or some other pursuit. Focus on those things to keep your bearings and pretty soon you'll find that, though your focal point has changed, you're headed in the right direction again. It does take some work, though.

What you're going through is pretty common but as long as you don't just allow yourself to drift you'll be fine.

If you're 22 years old, you were 'programmed' by cultic Mormonism during all of your formative years. As you know, Mo-ism was (and still is) all about PERFORMANCE, starting with OBEYING church teachings and complying with a myriad of LDS rules and expectations. If you were 'good'/'righteous' and jumped through all the time- and energy-consuming hoops that the Morg Church has created, and proved that you were 'worthy' by performing/behaving in the 'correct' way(s), according to Mo-ism, you received 'blessings' from the LDS Sky-God ('Heavenly Father', 'the Lord').

If you were 'bad', 'disobedient', 'slothful', 'rebellious' and otherwise an 'under-achiever', spiritually, the message of cultic Mormonism was very clear: 'God', as defined by Mormonism, was displeased with you, upset with you, saddened by your 'sinful' behavior and otherwise p*ssed-off at you for not PERFORMING as you should have (according to the control-addicted LDS Church and 'brainwashed' LDS leaders and teachers).

Here's relevant info. from the website about how cultic Mormonism 'programs' people:

'Worthiness'

Your thoughts and behavior do not make you worthy or unworthy. You are worthy of happiness and being treated decently simply because you exist. Your intrinsic worth has nothing to do with what you accomplish or do not accomplish in life. If you spent your life in a cave meditating (for example), you would be just as worthy as the busiest, most-sacrificing and hardest-working Mormon you know. You don't need to waste your energy always striving to be perfect in order to be granted blessings by God and receive, after you die, the big, 'celestial' prize, 'Exaltation' (so Mormon have been indoctrinated by the LDS Church to believe). Just live your life as you wish and create the life you want to have. Live fully by your mind and judgments, and develop your own values and sense of purpose based on your observations and experience. You have the right to do so. Furthermore, define success for yourself; you're not obliged to use others' yardsticks to measure (judge) your worth.

There is no omniscient, judgmental God who grants blessings and metes out punishments based on mortals' compliance or non-compliance to certain teachings and rules, only versions of God that people believe are true/real. All religions, including Mormonism, have come into existence through the mind of one or more individuals (starting with Joseph Smith, in the case of the Mormon religion). If you want to believe in some sort of 'higher power', create with your mind whatever version of God works for you. You're not obliged to subscribe to and mentally regurgitate anyone else's religious/spiritualistic beliefs.

(There's a lot more useful info. online at http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/)

The HUGE problem with the very dysfunctional LDS Church's constant emphasis on PERFORMANCE and WORTHINESS is that it 'programs' young people - it conditions them - to feel very stressed out/anxious and fearful about making ANY 'mistake' (see the list of 40 fears created by Mormonism at http://members.shaw.ca/blair_watson/fears.htm) and otherwise psychologically wounded.

Society and its messages about performance/achievements is also part of the dysfunctional 'programming.' People's true worth has NOTHING to do with what they achieve or don't achieve. A homeless person is no less worthy of being treated decently than the world's richest and most powerful people. But does society extend its fickle approval to homeless people? No. Those who achieve are lauded, while people who do less, make less (or very little) money, and otherwise are 'unspectacular', according to society's value system are typically ignored.

Were you raised to be a human DOING or a human BEING? If the former, the message to you was clear: Perform in accordance with others' expectations and you'll be approved of. But being is fundamentally about inner truth, including the truth explained in the 'Worthiness' section above.

Seems to me that the pendulum of your psyche has 'organically' swung from one extreme (all about performance - yes?) to the opposite side. You're free of cultic, performance-obsessed Mormonism and now your 'soul', if you will, is simply 'chilling' (i.e., getting used to being - and enjoying just being - as a 'non-achiever').

School at the post-secondary (college/university) level is typically intense, academically, and requires a good level of psychological well-being. I'd say that you're still in the process of 'deprogramming' yourself after 22 years in cultic Mormonism. My niece has been for the past two years. A few months after high school she was shipped off by her Mo-bot parents to BYU-I, where her class attendance and academic performance was so 'poor' that the univ. asked her to leave.

Back home, her 'brainwashed' LDS parents continued with their control-addicted, dysfunctional parenting style and things came to a head. She left, had to move out of the U.S. to find work (she was born in Canada and returned here), and slowly but steadily has reinvented herself post-Mormonism. Interestingly, her motivation to go to university has 'organically' emerged in the past couple of months and she's taking a senior high-school level chemistry class in preparation for her first year.

My advice to you is: Go with the flow. Let go of any negative judgment that you might think about yourself because of your lack of motivation relative to school. It'll come back in its own, good time. It's like a tree in autumn that sheds its leaves and shuts down for the winter. Or a bear that goes into hybernation (maximum 'non-performance' in the bear world!). In both cases, when spring comes, the tree slowly and steadily creates new leaves and gears up for more growth, and the bear emerges from being a 'lazy-ass' over the winter.

When you're ready to get back in the scholastic saddle, you'll feel it. Until then, enjoy a pace of life that works for you. To everything there is a season.

Best wishes!

Depression is anger turned inward. An old saying, but possibly this fits you. You may be experiencing this. or mental exhaustion, after jumping thru so many hoops to get where you are right now.

If it's not possible to step back from school, due to reality of life/financial pressure, try to funnel some of your anger toward that. Focus on proving to yourself--no one else--that you don't need mind manacles and made up fairy tales to hang on to, or to do well in this world.

Fight thru it to get to the other side. And hang on! It might get bumpy.

(For what it's worth, I just made this up: "Arrogance is inferiority turned outward" and you may use it at your leisure. It may come in handy, if you're still in contact with many TBMs who disagree with your view on the church.)

Don't be hard on yourself.

I went through something similar. I also recommend doing your best for this semester. Speak with a counselor at uni, someone you can talk to openly about what you're going through.

Then take some time out for yourself. Get a job for a year, do some cheap international travel, waste some money, live without any cares or worries in the world.

You'll notice soon enough that your desire to perform will naturally return and you'll have new reasons for wanting to do so, reasons that aren't due to your morgbot childhood programming but are from YOU and FOR you. Then you'll be able to return to school and be motivated for the right reasons.

Good luck! If you are struggling so much you feel you will fail the semester I definitely recommend speaking with a counselor as they will be able to withdraw you without penalty from the semester, if that is what you require to preserve your academic record.

Some great advice here, guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and help me out. I think what I will do is take this summer off from school and just really cut loose and hit the books hard this fall. I am hoping that will be enough time for me to come to grips with who I am w/o the church.

Thanks again!

If anyone has an stories/personal experiences they'd like to add please share!

Remember the old saying...."Living well is the best revenge". Do well in school, work and life. Don't let others look at your failures and attribute them to losing your testimony.
Live well!!!!

I am also 22 and have left the church. What you wrote spoke directly to me. I have NEVER felt so spiritually happy in all my life. What I did to get through the demotivation I felt was to prioritize what was most important to me. My marriage, my family, my school, work. Those are enough to keep me busy. Anyway, good luck. Aint it great to like yourself?

Maybe you should take a second look at your major or area of study, and see if it still is your passion. Maybe leaving the cult took away the reason you wanted this particular profession (whatever it is), and you are not as interested as you once were, and that is why you can't seem to study.

This is just a guess.

You have received some great advice here already, so I'll just echo some themes that worked for me. Take some time for yourself and make sure your priorities are where you really want them to be. Taking time off this summer sounds like a great idea. If your goal to earn your degree is more important than spending that time and mental effort on strengthening your current spiritual decision, then set some guidelines for unplugging from those topics online. This site and all it offers can suck you in and take a lot of your time. If school is truly a priority, then set some good old-fashioned goals to devote the right amount of time to your studies. I do all kinds of things that I'm not necessarily motivated to do, but they serve my priorities at some level. Anyway, take time off, assess, and hold yourself accountable to tackling your priorities, whatever those might be!