Posted by:
thegoodman
(
)
Date: August 03, 2020 11:21AM
New member here and newly exploring breaking down conditioning. I actually have been inactive since November 2018. It's not the first time I've been inactive although I was raised in the church and baptized at 8, etc.
The thing I have noticed both times I have gone inactive, is the recognition of a sort of.... The only way I can describe it, is an infantilization in mindset. Like, when I was in the church, I was in it to win it, abstaining from all the stuff you are supposed to avoid and totally obedient to the words of the prophets. At the time, especially this last time(2016-2018), I found a wellspring of motivation to self-improvement and industrious nature. I went to BYU-I for a year and had all these plans.
Looking back...there's something very childish and naive about the way I looked at the world. Like, I could do anything with the Spirit and it made me charge after things that I don't actually want(I was going to be an English teacher. Um...Andy, you hate kids? What are you doing?). It made me look at problems in a very simplified light, as if you can just choose yourself out of depression or gender dysphoria(both which I suffer with). Now that I've been watching a few ExMo youtube channels, I realize how it never occurred to me to question the highly edited books "Teachings of the Presidents" that we'd get every so often, nor did I even think to look at inconsistencies in things current and past prophets said to contradict each other. Like a little kid, blindly obedient, yet I'm 33.
Is this unique to Mormonism or is this something cult related, you think? Do you know what I am talking about? Like, it's more than simply clean living, but as if not watching R rated movies reduces your understanding of humanity, human nature, the grittiness of reality and human experience. Not that those are good teaching tools, but that in general, lack of exposure brings with it an innocence/ignorance that I have only recognized once I've shed the coat.
This is the first exmo group I've been in, the first time I've considered myself ex- rather than simply "inactive"(the CES letter is what finally did it). I'm a transman and for the first time in my life feeling genuinely myself. I just wanted to commiserate on this "childish mindset" thing because in watching videos now, I go through my old thoughts and analyze them and I am surprised to find how little I actually questioned or doubted or even searched. I was told a thing and I trusted and it feels like something about the culture of the church insulated me and kept me from truly SEEING the world as it is.