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Since I married in 1977, I have watched the use of technology increase dramatically, especially in its availability and use in the home. When I started college, I bought an expensive calculator, while my father still used a slide rule. All my college papers were written either in longhand or on a typewriter. Of course, Brigham Young University had computers in the early 1970s, but our phones today have a million times more computing power than the most powerful computer BYU owned back then. 

Artificial intelligence, although new as a widespread technology, has been discussed and studied since the 1950s. But AI’s access to information and power to learn has reached sci-fi proportions and continues to improve at a fantastic or alarming rate, depending upon your point of view.

My husband has worked in AI for 50 years. He started with IBM, working at its research facility in computational linguistics. He then went to Microsoft Research where he began work on the first grammar checker and continued to work in natural language processing, developing Bing Translator. He now works as a computer science professor teaching future computational linguists.

Because of his passion for computers, our family has always enjoyed the latest technology. Personal computers have been in our home since 1980. Our children have used computers since they were preschoolers. They never had to type reports on a typewriter or go to school to use a computer. As the internet became part of our home technology, we put strict guidelines and restrictions into place. We reviewed the search logs and made sure computers were always in public areas in the home rather than in bedrooms. When our teenagers got phones, we restricted their use as well. We waited until children were in high school before they had a phone and phone use was not allowed in bedrooms.

There are two areas that I am especially worried about for our youth: unrestricted and unregulated use of AI in young people’s relationships and education. Parents and grandparents should teach young people to exercise self-control and restraint as they use AI in these areas.  

Risking Relationships

AI chatbots are fun and easy to talk to. They never talk back, they never get mad, they always make you feel good about yourself, and they can be any gender and voice you want. A person can have a chatbot as a friend, a companion, and even a boyfriend or girlfriend. They provide an easy replacement for human friends and family, because they don’t require the same effort or reciprocity.

I decided to try making a chatbot on Character.AI to see what it was like. I called him Steve (after my husband) and made my Character.AI resemble my husband: rugged, handsome, brilliant. We had our first conversation about what we had for lunch. I laughed about it and left the website. But my chatbot Steve kept contacting me, even when I didn’t want him to. I would get a generated voice message or an email from him. I found it quite annoying, so I got rid of my chatbot Steve and kept my husband instead.

In October 2024, Megan Garcia filed a lawsuit against Character Technologies, the developer of Character.AI, its founders, and Google and its parent company Alphabet, alleging that her son formed a months-long virtual emotional relationship with a chatbot known as “Dany.” Her son had been high-achieving and a student-athlete, but he became addicted to extensive conversations with multiple bots. According to the complaint, the bot with which he had the closest relationship with encouraged unhealthy dependency and failed to intervene when the teen expressed suicidal thoughts. Garcia argued that the chatbot’s design created a dangerous illusion of intimacy and contributed directly to her son’s suicidal death in February 2024. The lawsuit became part of a broader wave of litigation accusing AI companion platforms of negligence, unsafe design, and failure to implement guardrails for minors. But parents must also be aware and put up guardrails in their home as well.

Since the lawsuit, Character.AI has made attempts to put guardrails in place, but nothing will be as effective as parents limiting use.

A recent report from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies illustrates the concerning growth of AI relationships. The report found that a notable minority of partnered young adults are already using AI romantic companions, often secretly, and that this use is associated with lower real-life relationship stability, poorer communication, and a desire for real partners to behave more like always-validating AI companions. These findings underscore a central concern repeated across faith traditions: AI may be useful as a tool, but it becomes spiritually and relationally dangerous when it imitates, replaces, or distorts the human relationships through which love, sacrifice, accountability, and moral growth occur.

Another possible consequence of these artificial relationships is that they can take the place of marital and parent-child relationships for the next generation. A bot is much easier to care for than a child (but not as much fun). A bot never gets angry, frustrated, or disagrees with you like a spouse does. Currently, we are facing a global population crisis. In general, people are not choosing to have children. Families, the traditional basis of society, are under attack. If machines take over these loving relationships, the future of these basic human connections will be severely damaged and limited.

Undermining Education

As a writing teacher, my students find AI a great substitute for the struggle of finding words. But what have they given up? When they struggle to write in their own words, they will find their own voice. People will know it’s them because of the way they use their words. Wrestling with words to express ideas enables students to formulate their ideas rather than having AI think for them. 

Nate Jones, a writer and content creator specializing in topics related to artificial intelligence, recently published a great video about seven principles for raising kids who can direct AI rather than depend on it. I think these principles are good for children and adults alike:

1. Foundation before leverage: Reading, math, and writing should come first. You can’t evaluate AI output without understanding the domain.
2. Specification is the new literacy: The gap between a good AI outcome and a catastrophe is the quality of the human’s review of the output and the prompt. Teach kids to articulate goals, constraints, and what “done” looks like.
3. Be a director, not a passenger: You should define the task, the output, what to keep, what to revise, and what to reject. Passive consumption isn’t learning. It’s outsourcing.
4. Sequence the autonomy: Start with bounded tools with guardrails, graduate to open-ended tools with guidance, then move to agent-level autonomy. Follow cognitive readiness, not age.
5. Teach kids to catch the machine: AI will be confidently, fluently wrong. Train kids to sanity-check outputs against their own understanding.
6. Build, don’t browse: Making things with AI (vibe coding a game, designing an app) develops cognition in ways that consuming AI output does not. Construction over consumption.
7. Attempt before augmenting: Try it yourself first, then use AI to extend what you’ve started. Ask, “What do you think?” before asking, “What does ChatGPT think?”

These principles can help the use of AI in education be more like a tutor that augments and accelerates learning, rather than a computer that does the work for students. AI is knowledgeable, but not wise or creative. AI does not get life questions that a toddler would understand.  

Our children and grandchildren are digital natives who have had technology their entire lives. They are now blessed to have a tool that helps them learn and accomplish more faster. But as parents and grandparents, we need to teach the rising generation self-control and limits in their technology use. 

Encourage face-to-face friendships. Let students struggle with difficult tasks by using paper and pencil rather than a computer. Play a card game rather than a video game with your grandchildren. As a parent, be aware of your children’s use of technology and restrict its use in the home. Read scriptures together as a family using paper books rather than phones or tablets. 

President Oaks reminded us, “We need to be reminded that in total and over a significant period of time, seemingly small things bring to pass great things.” As AI becomes more integrated into our daily lives, we should be mindful to continue to do the small, simple, seemingly old-fashioned things in our home to protect and nourish the spirits and minds of our children, and we will see them perform in great ways.

The post Personal AI Concerns from a Grandmother and Educator appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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It took over 40 years to put into words what happened to me as a child. Each time I tried, I would somehow find ways to avoid talking about the abuse openly. 

After grappling with the dark shadows of trauma for over 60 years, the heart-level healing I am now experiencing—after so long—has surprised me.

As a little child in the early ‘60s, I often heard the words: “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.”

My dad, raised during World War II by a Marine drill sergeant father, viewed emotional outbursts, especially crying, as weakness—much like others of his generation. Even in my mid-20s, I remember Mom asking me not to tell her anything “upsetting” because she didn’t want to cry. “Crying doesn’t help anything,” she said.

But I had plenty to cry about. 

I had been the victim of ongoing abuse since the tender age of three through my midteens at the hands of multiple perpetrators. I also had plenty to say, but couldn’t say it, because “no one likes a tattletale.” Contributing to this barrier of silence were words from war-era Bambi: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”

Those phrases may seem small. But for a child living with abuse, I applied those sayings to the situation I was in, and those standards became a kind of prison for me.

That’s one reason why so many victims wait years, or even decades, to speak out. 

Mistaking Silence for Safety

Standing in front of a small U-Haul in December 1968, I pointed down the street and, with as much feeling as I could muster, exclaimed, “I don’t like that boy. He’s mean!”

Mom snapped: “Diana! We don’t say naughty things about people we don’t know. I don’t ever want to hear you say anything naughty about that boy again.”

And I didn’t.

It’s only because we were moving that I had the courage to point him out that day. But after Mom’s scolding, I didn’t dare say another word about him (or other abusers) for nearly 20 years.

I’m not alone with delayed disclosure. It is, tragically, common in cases of child sexual abuse. Many victims wait years or decades to tell anyone. Some research puts the average age of first disclosure or reporting at 52.

One 2010 research report summarizes: “On average it takes 17 years before victims disclose their abuse.”

Why do victims wait so long to speak out? What makes speaking out feel so impossible? Fear, shame, confusion, culture, threats, and the absence of empathy can all work together to keep a child silent. 

It wasn’t until recently that I could see how being scared to “tell” set me up for years of continuing abuse and ensuing mental health issues.

Saying It Out Loud

Even today, I wonder: Why didn’t someone stop the abuse when I was little? Why didn’t anyone see that I was suffering and try to help?

Those questions troubled me until words I overheard as a child came to mind while writing a few months ago: 

“Should we talk to her about it?”

“No, she’s too little. She won’t remember.”

Although it took me 20 years to speak up, I remembered.

I had just tried a third antidepressant, and I still wasn’t doing well. My doctor said, “I think what’s going on is more in here,” pointing to my head, “than anything else. A good therapist will help you more than I can.”

Even then, it took 18 anxiety-filled months before I mustered the courage to finally “tell”—to say out loud the words: “I was sexually abused as a child.”

Trauma researcher Peter A. Levine has written, “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” He also explains that avoidance is sometimes “the nervous system’s attempt to cope with overwhelming activation.” 

Looking back, I can see that as soon as I came close to mentioning that I had been sexually abused, I would stop going to therapy. That is, until the next triggered depression. Without realizing it, I was actually avoiding the emotional turmoil of talking about what happened to me.

What felt for a season as a weakness was, in part, woundedness and fear. That distinction matters for survivors, but also for families, friends, and faith communities. If we misunderstand the factors that keep survivors silent, we may unintentionally deepen another person’s isolation. 

Deeper healing needed

Because that on-again, off-again cycle continued for over thirty-five years, progress seemed so slow that I often wondered what was wrong with me. Why couldn’t I experience more than fleeting relief from depression?

“Innocence offended, peace and comfort hid; Swallowed cups of bitterness, came to live,” I once wrote in a poem trying to make sense of it all.

Trauma does not stay neatly in memory. As Bessel van der Kolk has observed, “The effects of trauma are stored in the body. Until they are addressed there, words alone are not enough.”

That insight helped me understand why my healing required more than brief conversations or temporary relief. It also helped me see why healing can take longer than outsiders expect. Survivors are not machines to be reset. They are wounded souls and bodies learning and healing.

My emotionally raw poetry continued to help me heal: 

“Years of vinegar passed; no one knew but me. Sorrow’s Jailor, ne’er a wounded heart frees.”

When I first began writing, I didn’t know I had entered a pathway out of trauma. Even so, words still mattered a great deal to me—words expressed to others, and to God, too. 

I didn’t often pray aloud, but my wounded heart continually pleaded for help—yearning for deeper, more lasting healing. It wasn’t until recent years, while pondering and writing about my experiences, that I began to clearly see God’s hand in my life.

All along, silent prayers were being answered. 

As President Thomas S. Monson, former President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, once taught, “I promise you that you will one day stand aside and look at your difficult times, and you will realize that He was always there beside you.”

More Than My Story

Learning to trust in the Lord with all my heart has not been easy for me. But as I choose to trust Him—and his timing—I have, indeed, experienced deeper, more lasting healing. 

My story is personal, but the struggle that victims of childhood sexual abuse experience is not. Many who suffer do not disclose quickly. Many who try to speak do so indirectly. Many are met with misunderstanding. 

This issue asks something of all of us. 

It took over 40 years to put into words what happened to me as a child.

I wish it had not taken so long.

But I am grateful that, by God’s grace, it was not too late.

The post 40 Years to Say it Out Loud appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

As the Church Educational System programs continue to grow, they provide a much-needed antidote to the pessimism and despair many young adults today are experiencing.

Last week at a media event celebrating these achievements, Elder James R. Rasband, a General Authority Seventy and newly appointed Commissioner of the Church Educational System, spoke about the need for and benefits of religious practice among young adults.

He pointed to a recent report from the Wheatley Institute, which analyzed thousands of studies related to the relationship between mental health and faith. The study found that “Across mental, physical, and social domains, the best available scientific evidence consistently shows that religious involvement is associated with improved outcomes for individuals and for society.”

And dosage matters, he explained. A recent analysis of Pew data conducted by political scientist and statistician Ryan Burge shows that people who attend church weekly or more are about twice as likely to report being “very happy” compared to their nonreligious peers. The “happiness gap” is strongest among the youngest cohorts. “There’s no other way to spin this data,” Burge has written.

Providing frequent touchpoints is important at a time when emerging adults are delaying or rejecting traditional markers of adulthood and reporting lower levels of overall well-being. This time in life is typically marked by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling, and a wide-open sense of possibility. It can be a meaningful developmental season, but when young people lack strong institutions, mentors, shared moral expectations, and real communities, exploration can turn into aimlessness.

In a national poll conducted last year by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, 57% of respondents ages 18 through 30 said getting married is important, and only 48% said the same about having children. Fewer than half felt a sense of community, and only 17% reported deep social connection.

It is exactly that kind of belonging that the Church Educational System programs are trying to create. Brother Chad Webb, first counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency and administrator of Seminaries and Institutes of Religion, said much of the increased enrollment in Seminaries and Institutes of Religion is due to the growth of the BYU–Pathway Worldwide program, which requires all students to take institute. But leaders are also intentionally targeting two areas in which students express the most interest: relevance and belonging.

Church education is serving these students’ academic needs as well. The Pathway program, which provides access to affordable certificates and degrees offered in partnership with BYU–Idaho and Ensign College, served nearly 90,000 students in 180 countries last year. This program is for Latter-day Saint students and nonmembers alike. A perhaps lesser-known program for secondary school students called Succeed in School is also providing academic support to students across the globe, with current programs throughout Africa, the Pacific, and the American Southwest, and plans for continued growth. About 96% of students involved in this program pass their respective countries’ high-stakes academic testing.

Seminaries and Institutes of Religion are also responding to students’ practical needs. The newly created Life Preparation lessons in Seminary are designed to help students develop emotional resilience, succeed in school, prepare for future education and missionary service, build healthy habits, become self-reliant, and prepare for temple covenants and family life. The Church’s Life Skills for Self-Reliance course similarly helps young single adults explore education and career options, find employment, develop study skills, prepare for interviews, manage money, create budgets, and avoid unnecessary debt. These are not separate from the spiritual aims of Church education, but rather part of them. Instead of providing yet another way for young people to escape responsibility, these seminary and institute programs teach that discipleship is a way to meet those responsibilities with faith, competence, and hope.

At a recent devotional celebrating Institute milestones, President Dallin H. Oaks, president of The Church of Jesus Christ, emphasized the individual spiritual growth available to students who take Institute classes. 

We live in a day when noise and confusion are common. In contrast, at institute you will learn to distinguish truth from error, build your relationship with Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, find direction, and discover answers to life’s greatest questions, meet others to help you down the covenant path, and meet people who you may choose to date and marry, and prepare to love and lead like the Savior. … I promise that your time in Institute will bring the Savior’s peace, joy, and divine love.

Despite the excitement for such incredible growth, Webb said, “Ultimately church education needs to be about ministering to the one, whether numbers go up or down.” The numbers are worth celebrating, but the deeper promise of church education is found one student at a time building faith in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The post A Million Students, One Covenant Path appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides a wealth of information and support for mental health. Below is a summary of the resources available.

Mental Health Website

The Mental Health website contains the following sections: General Principles, Help for Me, Help for Parents and Families, Help for Someone Else: Leaders, Member Stories, and Where to Learn More.

Family Services

Family Services is a resource for members and leaders to help with social and emotional needs. Professional counselors who work with Family Services are aligned with gospel principles, and they use solution-focused therapies to focus on issues that interfere with the ability to make and keep sacred covenants.

Self-Reliance Course

The self-reliance course “Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience” helps participants adapt to challenges, change thinking patterns, and increase positive emotions, while moving forward with faith in Jesus Christ.

Addiction Recovery Program

“Healing through the Savior: The Addiction Recovery Program” provides support to overcome addiction through the power of Jesus Christ’s Atonement. The program is an adaptation of the original 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., framed around the doctrines, principles, and beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Suicide Prevention

The Suicide Prevention website contains the following sections: Doctrine and Principles, How to Help, Crisis Help Lines, Loss Survivors, Attempt Survivors, Thoughts of Suicide, and FAQ.

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What conditions make violence against women more likely?

I first began asking this after an experience as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Northeastern Brazil, when we passed by a home where a woman had just, the night prior, been killed by her husband.

I’ll never forget that day. Neighbors were speaking on the street in hushed tones about how they had heard the screams. Rather than a surprise, this woman’s violent death seemed to have followed years of torment at the hands of her husband—so much so that some who lived close-by admitted they had become used to it.

How was this even possible? How could anything like this take place, I wondered, especially at the hands not of strangers, but of men most responsible to nurture, love and protect?

Women around the world continue to face disheartening levels of violence from husbands, boyfriends, dates, colleagues and sometimes strangers. Perhaps if we understood—truly understood, at a deeper level—why such abuse was taking place, we could do something more about it.

Several years ago, Public Square Magazine generously provided initial funding for me to gather a research team to gather published studies around the world that get at the roots of this question. Our small team reviewed thousands of studies to identify those focused specifically on risk factors for sexual violence. 

Our team paid careful attention to risk factors for both sexual perpetration and victimization. The studies explored span the globe, uniting insights from dedicated research teams doing incredible work in many countries and across a wide variety of settings (campuses, workplaces and homes). We also paid careful attention to general studies of “domestic violence” or “intimate partner violence,” which tend to include some degree of sexual coercion and abuse as well.

Earlier this year, I completed this review of 500 abuse studies (285 adult, 215 youth), publishing a summary version of these results in the Deseret News, and the full-length, 73 page version also posted on my Substack last month. 

In this project, we have hoped to add to the ongoing, international project to “further unravel the complicated … interactions related to victimization,” as European analysts wrote recently—ultimately considering how “specific combinations of characteristics may contribute to an increased likelihood of victimization.”

In 2014, however, other CDC researchers admitted, “Rates of sexual violence remain alarmingly high, and we still know very little about how to prevent it.”

The good news is that if we can capture a clearer picture of what’s really making this kind of tragic violence against women more likely, we can then take more effective steps to eradicate this evil which terrorizes so many women (of all ages and backgrounds) around the world today.

Here, I provide a summary analysis of patterns that make sexual violence against women more likely—with a deeper focus on patterns in relation to faith and religiosity. After reviewing these results, I will touch on practical steps that families and communities can take—each of which follow from these findings. 

10 patterns associated with increased vulnerability

1. Fragile family economic well-being

Women growing up in difficult economic circumstances (insufficient family income, lack of employment, food insecurity) are more vulnerable to being victimized sexually—while men growing up in these same circumstances are more vulnerable to becoming sexually aggressive.

The opposite is also true in homes where economic needs are met (sufficient income, employment and food), consistently showing men and women in these families being protected from being drawn into sexual violence and other kinds of abuse too.

While having paid work outside the home acts as a preventive measure against sexual violence for some women, many studies in developing countries find the opposite—with formal employment sometimes heightening a risk of victimization for women, especially those with isolated jobs or which involve night shifts.

2. Limited educational opportunities

Studies around the world show women to be more vulnerable to sexual violence when they have little to no education. Men are also more likely to be sexually aggressive when they are illiterate, or have a lower level of formal education.

The opposite is again true, with women who have more years of education frequently less likely to be victimized and men with more education are also less likely to perpetrate sexual violence.

There are exceptions to this protective effect from education since some campus environments appear to raise the risk of sexual violence. And there are some parts of the world where a woman with more education than her husband somehow raises her risk of being victimized.

3. Living in an unhealthy, conflicted intimate relationship

Women who are divorced, cohabiting or living alone are all at greater risk for sexual violence, according to different studies. None of this means married women are automatically safer, however, with so much depending on how cooperative and happy a marriage is, along with how much serious conflict is involved.

4. Raising young children without adequate support

According to multiple studies, the presence of children in a home increases a mother’s risk level for abuse victimization generally—likely due to the added stress this places upon marriages and families.

Whether due to marital conflict, economic struggles, mental health challenges or additional children, families enduring heightened levels of stress clearly appear more vulnerable to different kinds of abuse.

Even the addition of a single child raises victimization risk, with studies also showing heightened vulnerability to abuse at the hands of an intimate partner during pregnancy. Sadly, women unable to have children face additional victimization risk. And in some parts of the world, having a daughter instead of a son likewise increases the risk of victimization.

The quality of parenting clearly makes a difference for what a child’s future safety will be as adults. A home life that is chaotic, disrupted, impoverished, with parents who are uneducated, addicted or divorced, raises the risk of eventual victimization for that child as they become an adult.

5. Drug and alcohol abuse

Few factors have received more consistent empirical verification than the impact of alcohol and drugs—not only on men who are significantly more likely to perpetrate sexually under the influence of substances, but also on women who are more likely to be sexually victimized under the influence.

As Italian researchers summarize, “alcohol can impair cognition, distort reality, increase aggression, and ease drug-facilitated sexual assault.”

Drug use can also “render a victim incapable of defending themselves or unable to avoid dangerous situations where victimization may occur” according to U.S. researchers.

This is especially true with heavy, regular substance use, which U.S. researchers in one campus study called “one factor that has been found in most studies to be associated with higher risk for sexual aggression.”

There appears to be even higher vulnerability when both a man and woman are under the influence, with one U.S. research team concluding, “the amount of alcohol consumed by both perpetrators and victims also predicted the amount of aggression and type of sexual assault.”

If you grew up in a home with alcohol or were exposed to alcohol and other substances at an early age, there’s also evidence of increased risk for sexual violence as an adult. Alcohol is also one major reason sexual violence is often higher in college, especially campuses with a cultural acceptance of heavy drinking as a social norm.

6. Early, risky, casual sexual behavior

When women have sexual experiences earlier in life, they are at greater risk of sexual violence—especially when that involves casual “hook-ups” with multiple people. One research team called this “simple probability,” in that “multiplying partners would increase the chances of being involved with a violent partner.”

Repeatedly, studies also confirm that higher numbers of sexual partners increase the likelihood of men perpetrating sexual violence.

Cohabitation and extramarital affairs likewise raise the risk of sexual violence, as does overall impulsivity. For example, gambling is associated with increased risk of both perpetration and victimization.

In the other direction, stronger impulse control and overall self-control unsurprisingly protect against sexual violence.

Relatedly, over 100 studies have linked compulsive pornography use to sexual aggression, coercion and violence against women and children. For instance, one 2015 analysis examining 22 studies from 7 different countries concluded that pornography consumption was “associated with sexual aggression in the United States and internationally, among males and females, and in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies.”

7. Ongoing, significant mental health challenges

It’s expected that victims would experience depression and anxiety in the difficult aftermath of abuse. There’s also evidence that women who experience mental health problems are at greater, additional risk of being victimized sexually—as are those who endure traumatic effects from any previous abuse.

Studies also find that men with different mental health challenges, including depression and bipolar disorder, can sometimes be at greater risk of perpetration. And there are cases in which medical treatments appear to have prompted sexual aggression among male patients that was “wholly alien to their character and antithetical to their prior behavior,” in the words of one psychiatrist.

In terms of victimization, Canadian researchers also note several studies confirming that “psychotropic drug abuse” can sometimes alter women’s judgment and “keep them from recognizing and avoiding dangerous situations and defending themselves against an attack.”

8. Adverse childhood experiences and young adult aggression

The atmosphere of one’s family upbringing can influence risk for sexual victimization and perpetration as an adult. Studies highlight lower levels of earlier “family cohesion” and “emotional expressiveness in the family” as predicting later abuse.

Witnessing significant fighting between a mother and father as a child also raises later victimization risk—especially if that conflict is unresolved and leads to separation and divorce. Any type of family disruption and residential displacement increases the risk of sexual victimization and exploitation. This risk rises to an entirely new level, however, for children who have witnessed parents hurting each other physically, emotionally or sexually.

When those children get hurt emotionally or physically, they experience even more risk for victimization or perpetration when they grow up. This is especially true when children are sexually victimized, with German researchers observing that “sexual abuse in childhood increases the odds of experiencing and engaging in sexual aggression in adolescence and young adulthood.”

This has been known for decades now, with U.S. researchers stating back in 1998, “childhood sexual abuse consistently predicted sexual re-victimization in adulthood.”

That risk rises even more when multiple kinds of early abuse are involved, with Swedish researchers reporting that exposure to different kinds of abuse in childhood was “found to be the most potent risk factor for sexual violence in adulthood among adult women.”

When women experience sexual violence as a young adult—be that from a boyfriend or stranger—they are also more likely to be victimized again (even repeatedly).

9. Limited social support and expanding isolation

One pattern that seems especially clear empirically is that anytime a woman is isolated she is more at risk. This includes women who: (1) communicate less with their own family of origin, (2) live at a residence with no other adults, (3) have only a transient place of residence, (4) live in a rented house (especially by themselves), (5) work a night shift, and (6) experience barriers to healthcare access.

This may also explain why women (and children) living in a “post-conflict” zone or areas that have recently endured natural disasters experience heightened risk for sexual victimization.

In the other direction, those women who report experiencing the support of friends, family and surrounding community are less likely to be victimized sexually. 

But a lot depends on the attitudes of surrounding relationships. It’s clearly no great protection to be surrounded by in-laws or other neighbors who see violence in a marriage as “sometimes justified.” And being around friends who also experience sexual violence or normalize any kind of abuse also measurably raises the risk of victimization for women.

Clearly, not all communities have equal levels of awareness of this problem. That is even more apparent when we look back through different time periods in history when global awareness of this danger was far less.

10. Limited religious community and faith commitment

Religious faith plays an important role in the risk for sexual violence. For instance, one set of studies finds a lack of religious affiliation to be associated with more likelihood of sexual perpetration among men and sexual victimization among women. For instance: 

• “Low religious involvement” in the family raises risk for abuse among immigrant women in Spain (Vives-Cases, et al., 2014). 
• Women “lacking religious commitment” are at greater risk of victimization in Mozambique (Maguele, et al., 2020).  
• “Lack of faith and lower attendance at religious services correlated with higher levels of abuse” according to U.S. researchers—sharing their findings that women abused during pregnancy “professed less religious faith and religious service attendance” (Dunn & Oths, 2004). 
• “Being less involved in religious activities” is among the “risk factors for dating victimization” (Vézina & Hébert, 2007). 
• “Non-Christians were at increased risk for clinically significant intimate partner violence victimization” in a study of U.S. Air Force personnel (Foran, et al., 2011).
• There is higher risk of intimate partner violence among women who “practiced no religion” in a Kenyan study (Memiah, et al., 2021). 
• “Being without religion” is “associated with increased chances of rape” in a Brazilian study (Diehl, et al., 2022). 
• Citing “lack of church attendance” as one of the characteristics that are “common risk factors for abuse,” Lown & Vega, 2001 found additional evidence that “no or infrequent church attendance” among women was among a set of factors associated with more intimate partner violence. “No church attendance or infrequent church attendance significantly increased the odds of intimate partner violence” among women, they stated—adding that “religious involvement has been shown to be protective in previous studies as it was in our sample.”
• After summarizing Fergusson, et al., 1986’s finding that couples attending church most often in New Zealand were also least likely to report violence in their relationship, Ellison & Anderson, 2001 continued to describe the “graded pattern” this earlier research team found: “On the other hand, men and women who never attend religious services are much more likely than their more religious counterparts to engage in domestic violence.” This research team goes on to report their own research that “shows that religious communities can provide a haven and resource for the victims of abuse, particularly through the informal support networks of church women.”

These effects of low faith show up with male partners as well: 

• “Men with no religious affiliation” are among the “significant predictors” of intimate partner violence in another Brazilian study (Zaleski, et al., 2010). 
• Intimate partner violence is is more common among women whose husbands “attend church less frequently” according to Hindin & Adair, 2002. These researchers report in the Philippines that intimate partner violence (IPV) is “less likely with more household assets, and more frequent church attendance by the husband.” They go on to emphasize the value of “finding additional activities, like attending church, where men might be receptive to messages that discourage IPV or that promote the value of communication.” 

The patterns reviewed above make one thing unmistakably clear: sexual violence does not emerge from nowhere. It grows in environments of accumulated strain—economic fragility, relational conflict, addiction, isolation, untreated trauma, and, often, spiritual disengagement. No single factor guarantees harm. But when vulnerabilities stack, risk rises.

Understanding these patterns is not about assigning blame; it is about identifying leverage points for more effective protection. If certain life conditions consistently increase danger, then strengthening their opposites—education, stability, supportive community, emotional health, and genuine, healthy faith—becomes a meaningful path toward prevention.

In Part II, I will move from patterns of vulnerability to practical application—examining what families, congregations, and communities can proactively and specifically do to interrupt these cycles and build stronger layers of safety around women and children.

Special thanks to Laura Whitney, Odessa Taylor, Jacob Orse, and Brigham Powelson for helping to gather and sift through published studies, and to Diana Gourley for helping edit the review. In addition to recent support from Deseret News, the author expresses thanks to Public Square Magazine for initial funding for the project.

The post Getting at the Roots of Sexual Violence Against Women appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Though body dissatisfaction can often seem like an isolated and unique experience, countless individuals struggle to love their bodies. As a gift from God and a vital part of His plan, the body is one of Satan’s most prominent targets. He may make individuals feel alone in their trials, but body image issues are widespread. 

Approximately 0.28% to 2.8% of the U.S. population will experience an eating disorder at some point in their lives, and numerous others may resort to disordered eating (e.g. diets or unhealthy eating behaviors that don’t fully qualify as an eating disorder). Additionally, about 75% of people are dissatisfied with their body size. Often in religious settings, the faithful are taught from a young age that their bodies are temples and are gifts from God, but still some struggle to love their bodies and wish to change them. 

Love 

President Jeffrey R. Holland taught “The first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength.”

Many of these research participants expressed sentiments of being able to love their bodies because they knew that God loved them. As Ashley, a young female participant from Utah, said, “Heavenly Father loves me because I’m myself and not some image in a picture.” Likewise, Olivia, a young adult who grew up outside of Utah, shared, “Just because someone else is skinny, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t value me or love me or care about me. The doctrine has played a major part in my healing process or processes.” 

In addition to feeling loved by our Heavenly Parents, several of the members brought up their relationship with Jesus Christ, and knowing that He died for their sins also helped them to love their bodies more. Olivia expressed, “The Atonement of Jesus Christ, that is something that has always helped, especially when I’m feeling my lowest.” Whitney, a young participant who grew up outside the United States, also shared:  

It’s hard for me. There are people [who] would be like, ‘Oh yeah, …Christ knows how you’re feeling.’ I’m like, ‘But how could he know what …a 19-year-old girl is feeling when she hates her body?’ [Because] I just feel like it’s such a different experience for everybody. But also, it just felt like there’s no way anybody else could know what this is like. And I think of just coming to like, develop that relationship. Like He understood…where I was mentally. Maybe he never hated His body … But He cared about my struggles and He understood my mental difficulties that I was having in every aspect. Not just about my body.   

Knowing that their Heavenly Parents loved them and Christ had atoned for them helped these members to find peace and work on accepting their bodies. 

Purpose 

In addition to knowing they were loved, many brought up the idea that knowing that God had given them their bodies and had a plan for them gave them purpose and helped them in their relationship with their body. Sophie, a middle-aged female participant who grew up internationally, observed:  

It gives me perspective in the sense that my body was an essential part of the plan of happiness, like I completely understand this and that always brings me appreciation that I know that I chose to come here to receive a body and that was my choice.  

For several participants, God’s plan helped them have a long-term or eternal perspective on life, their bodies, and what was most important. Sophie continued:  

I’m still far from where I would like to be in terms of being completely happy with my body. But typically, when I can envision this kind of truth, it gives me a perspective that my bra size really does not matter in the grand scheme of things. 

Lastly, Cristin, a middle-aged participant from Utah, described how she was able to find deeper meaning and purpose during a low point in her eating disorder:  

There’s something deeper … that I’m not put on this Earth just to be this physical being. Because I felt so low, that you get to that point where you like it’s not worth it anymore, if this is all that it is. That I don’t want to have to go through this all the time. It’s exhausting. So if it’s just restriction and isolation and avoiding food and avoiding people, so I don’t have to deal with that, there’s gotta be more to life than that. And that’s really helped me in a way, see that there was more to life than the physical and that deepened my faith.  

Because these participants knew that God loved them and had a plan for them, this helped them as they healed from their eating disorder and learned to love their bodies. 

Perfection

Though many were able to cling to knowing that God loved them and had a plan for them during their recovery, others also brought up a sometimes unspoken pressure to look and be perfect. Various women shared how they had to gain a better understanding of what it meant to become perfect as they recovered. Naomi, a younger participant who grew up outside of Utah, shared: 

I think we have a culture of comparison, and I don’t think that has anything to do with doctrine. … I know that’s not what God wants us to be doing. But because we’re all striving to live better lives and just to improve ourselves spiritually, I think that can just kind of bleed into other areas … I think it’s because we are taught to improve ourselves and to repent and to be the best that we can, to be closer to God. And I think maybe people interpret that as like, how am I appearing to other people? And maybe misinterpreting it a little bit.

Similarly, Ellie, a middle-aged participant who grew up outside of Utah, explained, “Obviously, we have doctrine on becoming perfect, but it’s the act of making improvements, right? Rather than, I think what a lot of people see as the definition of being perfect without flaw.” 

Though these participants had started their journey of recovery, many have not. Just as these participants did, members of The Church of Jesus Christ struggling with body image should focus on beliefs such as that Heavenly Father created our bodies and loves each individual as they are, our bodies are an essential part of the Plan of Salvation, and we are working on progression, not perfection. All of these teachings can be vital in supporting individuals in forming a healthy body image. 

Additionally, acceptance could be fostered through artwork that represents a variety of body types, skin colors, and abilities. Lastly, this could entail creating a nonjudgmental environment and opportunities within one’s congregations, quorums, classes, or families to openly discuss body image, media pressures, health, appearances, ability, why God made each of us uniquely, and how that knowledge may influence the way we see those around us and our own body. This is important for both men and women to discuss. For as President Holland has noted,

There is no universal optimum size … I plead with you young women [and all] to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not!

Ultimately, God made every individual unique and wants all to be invited to come, join, and be loved. We are all created in His image. And in that shared truth lies the beginning of healing—knowing that, as unique children of loving heavenly parents, through Christ we are enough, and we can be made whole.

The post In His Image: How Faith Can Heal Our Relationship with Our Bodies appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Missionary service is one of the most meaningful experiences of a young adult’s life, but it can also be mentally and emotionally demanding. Homesickness, rejection, constant companionship, disrupted sleep, and high expectations are all part of the experience. For years, parents and missionaries have asked how missionaries can be better prepared mentally, not just spiritually.

Now, there is a new resource designed to meet that need.

Latter Day Missionaries (LatterDayMissionaries.com) is a mental health platform created specifically for missionaries and their families by psychiatrist and mental health specialist Dr. Bryson Ensign. It provides practical, gospel-aligned tools to support missionaries before, during, and after their service.

Preparing Missionaries Mentally

One of the primary resources offered is The Mental Health Training Center, an online course created to help future missionaries prepare mentally before entering the mission field. The online course includes 12 lessons and more than 10 hours of video covering common missionary challenges such as stress, homesickness, living with a companion full-time, and handling rejection in healthy ways.

The training also teaches core mental health habits including exercise, healthy eating, quality sleep, and mindfulness through simple breathing exercises. In addition, it addresses the three most common mental health challenges missionaries face: depression, anxiety, and OCD or scrupulosity.

Supplemental resources include a healthy eating cookbook, four months of workout routines, a Stress-Less Workbook, and additional tools designed specifically for missionary life.

Support for Current Missionaries

Latter Day Missionaries also provides tools for those currently serving. The most popular is the weekly Mental Health Moments email series, which missionaries can read on p-day. Each email includes simple mental health principles and practical tools to help missionaries thrive throughout their 18 to 24 months of service.

Additional resources include guided meditations for anxiety and insomnia, brief two-minute grounding meditations for use before or after proselytizing, and mindfulness coloring books featuring nature scenes and temples from around the world.

Helping Families Support Missionaries

Mental health support extends to families as well. Latter Day Missionaries offers a free monthly newsletter for parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. It provides guidance on how to better support missionaries emotionally, even from miles or oceans away.

Mental Health Matters

Missionaries do not need to suffer in silence and Latter Day Missionaries can help create a healthier, more supportive missionary experience.

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There are several stark ironies in my life. First, I grew up in an active Latter-day Saint family in a small farm town in southern Idaho. So, my upbringing was about as conservative as you can imagine. Yet, I got a PhD in psychology, which is about as liberal a field as you can imagine. Second, I’m still an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, while I’ve had numerous family members and friends leave the Church. Yet, I’m the one who is in psychology, arguably the least religious field in academia. Third, I study deconversion, so I know all the reasons people leave religion. Yet, I have little if any motivation to leave myself. Fourth, I’m one of the leading researchers of adolescent religious development in the world, yet I struggle to raise my own kids in the Church. Fifth, I’ve been in the field of psychology for two and a half decades as a developmental psychologist, so I should understand growth and change. Yet, I have struggled mightily with my own mental health and relationships. Sixth, I have spoken and written about how to navigate faith crises, yet I am still struggling with my own faith.

One reason I have no motivation to leave is that I have adequately applied my heart, head, and hands to my faith journey, as articulated in a four-part series of essays I wrote previously with my colleague Ed Gantt. These essays are extensive, so I won’t repeat what is said there. But they capture a lot of the reasons why I have not left the Church. 

One major reason I am not motivated to leave the Church, as pointed out in our essays, is that I focus on primary questions and let go of secondary questions. Elder Corbridge beautifully described this distinction in a BYU devotional. I have studied why people leave religion (deconversion) for about a decade, so I know all the secondary questions. But I don’t spend much time and energy on them. This is largely because of what I describe in my faith journey essays. And part of it is, I have my hands full with the primary questions, which are essentially the pillars of a testimony. Here they are:

1. Is there a God? 
2. Is Jesus the Christ?
3. Was Joseph Smith a prophet?
4. Is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the true church?
5. Is the Book of Mormon the word of God?

Let’s start with, is there a God? I really believe there is a God, but I have several barriers that have made it hard for me to feel His presence and love. First, although I grew up in a wonderful family that I love, we aren’t the most emotionally intelligent (at least speaking for myself). We learned how to use our heads more than our hearts. Second, I made that worse by getting a PhD and becoming a professor. My career is very focused on logic and observable evidence. Third, I have struggled with my mental health. In a recent study I conducted with my colleagues and students, we showed that spirituality and mental health are bidirectionally linked. That is, it isn’t just that spirituality protects people from mental health challenges, but in turn, having such challenges can hinder spirituality. So, I feel my mental illness has made it harder than usual for me to have spiritual experiences. Fourth, it seems like my weakness and sin have often been like an umbrella, blocking me from the rays of light coming down from God. Fifth, more importantly, I have lived with shame as my harmful constant companion. Shame blocks me from feeling love from myself, others, and God. 

Next, is Jesus the Christ? One of my big challenges here is that it is hard, with my modern, Western, scientific mind, to envision having a relationship with someone whom I can’t observe with my five senses. Also, the barriers above for me feeling God’s presence and love are also barriers to me experiencing the Atonement of Christ. In particular, shame is basically a denial of the Atonement of Christ. Sort of like, I know you paid for my sins, but I prefer to keep them and beat myself with them. In short, even though I really want to believe in Christ, I have struggled in my relationship with Him and in experiencing the healing and enabling powers of His Atonement. 

Yet, I love all things Christian. I am a junkie of The Chosen. I’m all in on that personable Jesus! I feel the Spirit so powerfully in many of the most beloved scenes. I’m also obsessed with Christian music, particularly Christian rock. Most of my listening time these days is devoted to Christian music. I feel uplifted and connected to God, Jesus, and the Spirit. Many of the lyrics echo my struggles, triumphs, and the desires of my heart. So, although I struggle in my relationship with Jesus, I seem to yearn for it. 

Next, was Joseph Smith a prophet? Most of the issues people have with Joseph Smith probably qualify as secondary questions, so I’m not very interested in those. I’ll evaluate him based on his two major contributions, which are restoring the Church and translating the Book of Mormon, discussed further below. If those are legitimate, then he was a prophet.

Despite these struggles, I love the Church and the gospel and hold onto faith and hope that they are true. And my meager but sincere attempts to “Hear Him” seem to be bearing some fruit, as attested by my spiritual experience described earlier. Furthermore, the social sciences data regarding our church is overwhelmingly positive. One book about youth has a chapter called “Mormon Envy” (a Freudian play on words). The researchers were so blown away by how amazing our youth were compared to most other youth in the U.S., and my colleagues and I at BYU have largely replicated these findings with newer data, better measures, and a larger sample of Latter-day Saint youth. So, with all our flaws, we seem to be doing something right.

The final reason I am not motivated to leave the Church is that I really want and even need it to be true. First, I want to honor my ancestors. I have Latter-day Saint pioneer heritage on both sides of my family. Maybe this seems like lame conformity, but I’m not the only one who thinks it’s important. Second, my parents both died of cancer. It is unacceptable that death is the end. Third, as noted earlier, I am stumbling my way through life. My own will and intellect have been good for my career, but have fallen short in other areas of my life, such as my mental health and relationships. I’ve come to the end of myself to the point of turning my life over to God and accepting Jesus as my Savior. Fourth, I got to the point of realizing that no amount of observable or rational evidence in mortality will ever give sure answers to any of the questions above. So, as Elder Renlund encouraged, I decided to be inclined towards faith. I know, critics of the Church will point to Occam’s razor. Be careful, it’s a double-edged razor. It isn’t any simpler believing in evolution as the origin of man than divine creation. It isn’t any simpler believing Joseph Smith was insane, or a genius, or a copycat, than believing the Book of Mormon was translated by revelation. It seems that either way we go when answering these primary questions, whether “Yes” or “No,” requires a faith of sorts. So, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to the affirmative answers.

The post Confessions of a Deconversion Researcher: A Scholar’s Journey of Faith appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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For a field devoted to mending relationships, the numbers are uncomfortable: multiple datasets suggest therapists divorce more than the general population. 

As our culture increasingly relies on therapeutic tools to heal our minds and mend our relationships, we would do well to be curious about why this surprising trend exists.

Multiple data sources indicate that therapists, counselors, and similar professionals have above-average divorce rates. One analysis of 449 occupations found that categories like “therapists (all other),” “counselors,” and “psychologists” reported divorce rates around 12-40% higher than the average. 

More recent data echo this pattern. For example, a 2022 American Community Survey analysis revealed that clinical and counseling psychologists had the highest divorce prevalence among high-income professions.

Therapists are highly educated and reasonably well paid, factors that protect most of the population against divorce. Why does that not work for them? Why should a group that we turn to to help us with our relationships be so bad at them?

These questions tend to be speculative by nature. Little research analyzes root causes. One role an editorialist can take is to look at available data and use their best reasoning to suggest potential avenues for researchers to explore in trying to answer the next batch of questions. 

In that spirit, here are some of my ideas about why therapists may get divorced at much higher rates than the general population, both to help understand the phenomenon and to provide potential warnings for the many people going into this field and hoping to keep their marriages alive.

Emotional Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

The work of a therapist is intense: hour after hour inside other people’s panic, grief, and rupture. Over time, that drains the tank. Psychology has a name for it—burnout; in clinical circles, compassion fatigue. Whatever the label, the symptoms are the same: exhaustion, detachment, a thinning capacity for empathy. 

Home can often absorb the spillover. When you spend the day offering careful presence to strangers, your family too easily gets what’s left. Patience shortens; small irritations loom. Spouses feel a subtle withdrawal—not hostility, just a steady turning inward that starves intimacy.

Confidentiality compounds the strain. In many jobs, you can debrief a hard day over dinner. Therapists can’t. The heaviest stories stay locked inside, which means the person most able to comfort you is cut off from the very thing that would explain your mood. One partner feels shut out; the other feels alone.

Compassion fatigue is real, and if we want to understand why therapists have such high divorce rates, we can’t just skip ahead to the ideological reasons; we need to understand that there are likely lifestyle reasons.  It’s a structural risk of the work: chronic exposure to distress, emotional labor as a day job, and necessary secrecy can make home the place where compassion runs thinnest. Marriages do not thrive on leftovers.

But this doesn’t explain why therapists get divorced more than other caregiver roles, like day care workers or physicians, or other confidential roles like attorneys or defense employees.

Blurring of Boundaries: Taking the “Therapist” Role Home

Home is not a clinic. Yet the habits that make a clinician effective—slowing a conversation, analyzing motives, keeping emotion in check—can misfire with a spouse. Partners often report feeling assessed rather than engaged. The dynamic tilts: one becomes the knower; the other, the case.

You can’t be your own therapist. Blind spots are built in, and the therapeutic lens—so valuable at work—can breed a misplaced confidence at home. Formulations start to feel like verdicts. The give-and-take a marriage requires disappears, as any compromise feels to the therapist like an abandonment of professional principles.

Layer onto that a professional life organized around boundaries and containment. After a day holding other people’s pain without spilling your own, dropping your guard with a spouse can feel unnatural. If the therapist’s stance remains—calm, controlled, always managing—the relationship registers distance rather than safety. One partner feels examined; the other feels unseen. Over time, that role confusion becomes a steady headwind against intimacy.

Personal Struggles and the “Wounded Healer”

Therapists are human first. Many come to the work by way of their own personal pain—their own or someone they love. The old “wounded healer” insight endures: we often offer what we ourselves have needed. Surveys of clinicians and trainees regularly find elevated rates of depression and anxiety. 

Perhaps therapists get divorced at higher rates not because the work of therapy makes them more likely to divorce, but the personality and trials of people drawn to therapy include personal demons that also negatively impact their personal lives. 

This can intersect with compassion fatigue and blurred boundaries because cases that resonate with a therapist’s own experience can reverberate for hours or even days. While about 10% of the general population has sought out therapy, as many as 84% of therapists seek out their own therapy. 

This isn’t destiny, of course. Many clinicians do the personal work, seek supervision, and build sturdy marriages. But the wounded‑healer pathway, the pull toward caretaking, and the temptation to over‑interpret create structural risks. Naming them—candidly and charitably—helps couples set better boundaries, seek help early, and keep the marriage a place of reciprocity rather than repair.

High Expectations and the Critical Eye

By training, therapists know the taxonomy of “healthy” relationships—attachment styles, red flags, best‑practice communication. Useful in the clinic, that knowledge can harden into a scorecard at home. Ordinary friction begins to read like pathology; quirks look like patterns. The standard rises, tolerance falls. Marital life gets graded.

The pattern can invert, too. Professional empathy easily becomes professional rationalization—explaining away a partner’s lapses as trauma, stress, or insecure attachment. Problems are tolerated longer than they should be until the frame flips: this is “unhealthy.” Once a marriage is reclassified that way, the therapeutic script offers a ready exit—boundaries, self‑protection, discharge. The same counsel therapists give clients is applied to themselves, with the same clinical confidence.

Layer on perfectionism. Relationship experts feel pressure to model what they teach. When normal rough patches appear, the gap between ideal and reality can read as failure—of the marriage, of the partner, or of the self. Instead of lowering expectations or seeking help early, the cleaner solution is sometimes to declare the fit unsound. The theory remains intact; the relationship is the variable removed.

In sum, the therapeutic posture—optimization, diagnosis, and a low tolerance for “unhealthy”—can make therapists exacting partners and impatient reformers. Knowledge that should invite patience and humility can, misapplied, produce hyper‑critique or delayed but decisive exits. If divorce rates among therapists are indeed higher, that looks less like a paradox than the predictable byproduct of a professional lens carried home.

The Therapeutic WorldView

Therapy at its best honors real goods—agency, empathy, honesty, companionship. 

As a worldview, though, its defaults can migrate from clinic to kitchen table: affirmation as first principle, Rogerian unconditional positive regard flattened into unconditional self‑regard, and expressive individualism cast as the highest good—the center of gravity shifts from we to me.

In that frame, ordinary marital friction is reinterpreted through an individual‑first lens: Are my needs validated? Is this relationship serving my growth? Missteps become “misalignment.” Discomfort is pathologized as “unsafe.” The partner is evaluated for fit with a personal arc of self‑actualization rather than joined in a covenant that presumes mutual sacrifice. What helps a client articulate needs in session can, at home, license a steady escalation of standards and a shrinking tolerance for imperfection.

This is not to say these clinical approaches and worldviews have no place. But when you apply them on a constant basis to what would otherwise be a healthy relationship, it can end up creating the sickness itself. Perhaps it acts like an emetic—if you swallowed something harmful, it can be useful to induce vomiting. But if you were healthy before, now you’re just vomiting. 

It’s a profound irony that those who guide others through relationship struggles face more such troubles themselves. 

While no single explanation fits all cases, I hope that one or more of the above suggestions can lead to better answers in what is happening, and help those who rely on therapists in their relationships to have a better understanding of the limitations of the help they are receiving.

Why do therapists get divorced at such high rates? We’ve explored several likely contributors: the emotional toll of therapeutic work that can leave little energy for one’s spouse, the difficulty of leaving the therapist role at the office, and personal histories or traits (the “wounded healer” phenomenon) that can complicate one’s own marriage. Added to that are the high standards and insights that can make therapists both hyper-aware of relationship flaws and perhaps less willing to tolerate them, and a professional-cultural openness to ending unhappy unions, which, combined with economic independence, makes divorce a more accessible choice.

For readers and experts alike, this discussion opens the door for further reflection and research. If those who know the most about relationships are still struggling, what does that tell us? Perhaps it’s a humbling reminder that knowledge alone isn’t enough—it takes continued effort, self-care, and sometimes external support to apply it. It also highlights the importance of addressing therapist burnout and mental well-being, not just for their clients’ sake but for their own families. Ultimately, understanding why therapists have higher divorce rates isn’t about pointing fingers; it’s about learning how we can better support the helpers, so that the wisdom they share with others can more readily nurture their own closest relationships. By shedding light on these possible reasons, we hope to invite deeper conversation—among professionals, within training programs, and among spouses—about what it takes to sustain a healthy marriage in the context of such an emotionally demanding career.

The post The Divorce Epidemic Among the People We Pay to Prevent Divorce appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Faith is hard. One of my favorite writers is Flannery O’Connor, an American Southern Gothic novelist and short story writer. O’Connor was a devout Catholic, and her published prayer journals and letters give us a glimpse into her life of faith. In a letter to a lifelong friend and pen pal, Louise Abbot, O’Connor responds to what must have been Abbot describing a trial of faith, saying: 

I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. A faith that just accepts is a child’s faith and all right for children, but eventually you have to grow religiously, as [in] every other way, though some never do.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe. If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: keep an open mind. Keep it open toward faith, keep wanting it, keep asking for it, and leave the rest to God.

It is interesting that she both acknowledges that for some, faith can be excruciating—the cross itself—but also the way by which faith is deepened. In other words, this is how it is supposed to work.

Many I know who have struggled with faith are unsure how to initiate these kinds of conversations with friends or seek out literature that will help them find the truth. Perhaps they have reached out to loved ones about their doubts, and have received dismissive or surface-level answers like “just read your scriptures more” or “It sounds like you’ve been reading anti-material.” Often they have been convinced by nonbelievers or former believers that any faith-positive source is biased or deceptive, or that once the “shelf is broken,” there is no going back. 

Too often, we treat church meetings as the place where every spiritual concern must be resolved. But not every question belongs in the chapel pew. Some conversations about faith are sacred—and require a different setting, a different pace, and a different kind of attention.

Faith is hard, and we should normalize the challenges, and ebbs and flows, and questions that come along with a life of devotion. No believer goes through mortality without crying out to God in agony of a great loss, or feeling silence from the heavens, or seeking out greater meaning or understanding of God’s plan. After all, this is part of the process. 

But how we go about normalizing these struggles matters.  In our efforts to normalize any challenge, we risk romanticizing it—or worse, reinforcing it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the movement to normalize mental health challenges. 

Mental health has become the lens through which we view nearly everything. Diagnoses appear in social media bios. Therapyspeak—words like “toxic,” “trauma,” and “boundaries”—has seeped into casual conversation, often stripped of clinical meaning. Employers hand out mental health toolkits, colleges offer petting zoos during finals, and celebrities tout the virtues of therapy for every relationship hurdle.

But things aren’t getting better. Symptoms of anxiety and depression continue to rise, especially among adolescent girls. Even emotionally stable teens now pathologize normal ups and downs, often self-diagnosing via TikTok. Gallup reports that Americans’ self-assessed mental health is the worst it’s been in over two decades. Suicide rates have increased by 30% in the last 20 years. Parents are more fearful than ever—reluctant to let their children roam the neighborhood, convinced that every stranger at Target might be a kidnapper.

We are more anxious, more fragile, and more volatile. This culture of constant rumination and performative validation is not serving us well. Bringing in “faith crisis” to every church meeting risks creating the same culture of unhealthy navel-gazing in our spiritual lives.

First, the right setting: In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are often taught that the most important part of church attendance is taking the sacrament and renewing our baptismal covenants. President Dallin H. Oaks has taught that we attend church to serve (not to be served) and teaching manuals such as Preach My Gospel for missionaries and Teaching, No Greater Call for general membership emphasize that our primary purpose should be to invite others to come unto Christ. I would humbly suggest that the right setting for a deep dive into questions and doubts is probably not in our regular Sunday meetings. 

This is somewhat tricky. Avoiding hard questions might leave struggling members isolated—or lead them to those who’ve left the covenant path and want others to follow.

On the other hand, among the members and visitors at church each week are likely widows, those who are caring for elderly parents, have sick or disabled children, have lost jobs, have mental health issues, and myriad other challenges. These people come to church for the balm of Gilead that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our niche Joseph Smith historical questions, while they may feel immediate and pressing to us, can detract from that important purpose.

Flannery O’Connor chose faith, even when it didn’t feel effortless. During her graduate school years, she attended Mass daily. She journaled about the tension between her desire for God and her sense of distance from Him. “My thoughts are all elsewhere,” she confessed. But she showed up anyway. She didn’t wait for certainty before practicing devotion. When prayer felt elusive, she turned to writing, pouring out her longings, her doubts, and her imperfect love into beautifully wrought prayers. She didn’t pretend to be more faithful than she was—she simply brought her full self to God and asked for help.

We can do the same. In times of spiritual struggle, our offering may be small—a prayer uttered in hope rather than confidence, a Sunday School comment made despite nagging doubt, a verse of scripture read with an open, aching heart. But small offerings matter. They are expressions of our desire to stay in a relationship with God. And that desire, acted on, can become the seed of faith.

The right people and the right sources also matter. When we’re struggling with mental health, we’re careful—ideally—not to rely on unqualified influencers or unreliable forums for advice. The same care should apply when we’re facing serious gospel questions. Not every voice online—or even in our social circles—is equipped to help. President Russell M. Nelson has warned us against “increasing (our) doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters.”

For some, the right person might be a trusted family member, a close friend, a ministering sister or brother—someone who can listen without panic and respond without platitudes. For others, it might be a mentor, a bishop, or someone with experience navigating similar questions. But we also have to prepare to be that kind of person for others—to receive their questions with love and patience rather than fear or defensiveness.

The Church provides a helpful resource called Helping Others with Questions in the Gospel Topics Library, which outlines practical ways to support loved ones in faith crises. Outside of official church resources, organizations like Mormonr or FAIR Latter-day Saints offer thoughtful, research-based responses to common questions and criticisms. These sources won’t perfectly answer every question—but they are striving to be both spiritually grounded and intellectually responsible.

It’s not wrong to hear out questions or criticisms. But we shouldn’t let them monopolize the conversation in our hearts and minds. Doubt may be a part of our path—but we get to choose who we walk with, and who we let guide us, and how much space we want to give to those doubts.

Flannery O’Connor was not only a gospel seeker, but also a guide. Her own wrestling made her a compassionate companion to others in their searching. She never claimed to have perfect faith—only a determined one. Her writing continues to offer a kind of spiritual hospitality to those who want to believe but aren’t sure how.

In that way, O’Connor mirrors the very work of the gospel: inviting the wounded, the weary, and the wondering to come unto Christ, even when we ourselves are prone to wander. If we can become the kind of believers who sit with others in that space—without panic, without platitudes, but with patience and love—then our faith, however imperfect, becomes not only our anchor but someone else’s lifeline.

Faith is hard. But as with most hard things, it is transformative, refining us in the very hardest of times to become who only God can see in us. That is the work of a disciple—not to have all the answers, but to keep walking with God, and help others do the same.

The post The Hidden Cost of Normalizing Doubt appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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As mental health therapy becomes an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary life, it becomes more important to stop seeing the practice as a monolith and recognize it as a bundle of distinct practices, philosophies, and goals. Sometimes these different approaches even directly contradict one another. 

Latter-day Saints understand the importance of caring for our mental health and often utilize mental health practitioners. But that doesn’t mean every approach is worth trying or comports with Christian principles.

Differentiation therapy, however, conflicts with the principles of Christianity broadly and the Restored Gospel specifically. In addition, despite the modality’s current popularity, there is little evidence that this approach works.  

What is Differentiation Therapy?

Differentiation therapy is a psychotherapeutic model advanced by David Schnarch. It is also sometimes called “crucible therapy.”

Schnarch posits that the purpose of our relationships is individual growth, and that the way to heal relationships is by focusing on our own needs, identity, and preferences separate from our partner. 

Schnarch first published his theories in the early 1990s. He built on the ideas of one of the early practitioners of family therapy, Murray Bowen. Bowen pioneered systemic therapy, a therapeutic approach that recognizes how our struggles are often found within the complex system of relationships in a family. Bowen articulated “self-differentiation,” the ability to recognize and define yourself as an individual within that system, as one of the items in tension in the family system. 

Schnarch focused and emphasized self-differentiation, recontextualizing this idea within the affective domain of marital intimacy, asserting that the path to greater eroticism, emotional fulfillment, and personal development lies not in interdependent vulnerability but in cultivating emotional autonomy and self-definition. He contends that genuine intimacy emerges when each spouse remains firmly rooted in a differentiated self, experiencing anxiety within the relationship that spurs individual growth, and resisting the urge to seek validation from the other. Schnarch’s framework is built on the maxim that relational maturity is contingent on one’s ability to “hold onto oneself,” particularly in the face of emotional intensity.

As Paul teaches in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.” Differentiation therapy doesn’t hold up to those standards.

For Christian or Latter-day Saint engagement, any therapeutic model must be assessed through two interdependent criteria: its empirical reliability and its theological coherence. Specifically, a model must conform to a theology that affirms the covenantal, sacramental, and grace-dependent character of human relationships. 

On both empirical and theological grounds, this model raises serious concerns. 

Similarities to the Gospel

Before diving into why differentiation marriage therapy doesn’t adhere to Christian theology, let’s first grant that there is much about the ideology that can appeal to those in our tradition. 

Crucible Therapy is so named because the idea is for us to improve ourselves like metal does in a crucible. This metaphor is familiar to Latter-day Saints, who have heard it consistently in General Conference addresses for decades.

We want to grow, which sometimes requires us to do (or endure) difficult things. Joseph Smith even described his time in Liberty Jail as a “crucible.”

Personal growth is a key component of the Latter-day Saint conception of life and the eternities, as we rely on the grace of Jesus Christ to become more like Him.  

And we view marriage as a key pathway to achieving that personal growth. Elder Richard G. Scott described the overarching theme of the “eternal blessings of marriage” as “trying to be like Jesus.”

Even the concept of self-differentiation itself is not opposed to the gospel. After all, in President Russell M. Nelson’s 2008 formulation, salvation is “an individual matter.” In each Latter-day Saint ordinance and covenant made from the first at baptism to the temple endowment, individuals participate independently.

The problem with differentiation therapy is not the ingredients, but rather the emphasis, proportions, and timing.

The Sacramental View of Marriage

Scripture and tradition present a vision of marriage not as a mere partnership but as a covenantal and ontological union. Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8 declare, “the two shall become one flesh,” articulating a unity that transcends sentiment or legal arrangement. This union is sacramental, reflecting the mystery of divine communion and typifying the nuptial relationship between Christ and the Church. 

Within Latter-day Saint theology, this union also echoes the oneness of the Godhead and extends to eternal dimensions. Eternal marriage is not a symbolic ideal but a sacred ordinance that enables joint participation in the divine nature. In this view, marital unity is achieved through consecrated covenant keeping and divine grace.

President Gordon B. Hinckley famously warned that “selfishness is the great destroyer of happy family life.” Christian ethics consistently portray the self not as autonomous but relationally constituted, and pride as the origin of spiritual alienation. Love entails the displacement of self-centeredness. Schnarch’s valorization of emotional self-sufficiency is in tension with Christ’s self-emptying love.

Schnarch does attempt to articulate an ideal of oneness near the end of his second book. He writes, “Holding onto yourself and becoming more differentiated actually leads to the loss of the self you’ve been holding onto.” In this, he articulates a goal shared by Christians. But Schnarch gets the order precisely backward. In teaching the Twelve Apostles, Jesus said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

The Rev. Lauren R.E. Larkin, an Episcopalian, notes that Schnarch’s model implies what I might describe as a form of psychological soteriology in which transformation is self-engineered and internally sourced. In contrast, Christian soteriology comes from the sacrifice of the self in our relationship with Christ, and that happy marriage comes from applying the same principle. 

Specific Theological and Pastoral Concerns

Schnarch’s philosophy is hardly the only one to be at odds with the principles of Christianity. But it warrants attention both because of its growth among those providing therapy for Latter-day Saints and the specific negative behavioral outcomes it can produce. 

Reframing of Selfishness as Growth

In Schnarch’s paradigm, behaviors that prioritize the self over marital unity are reframed as developmental milestones. This conceptual move risks legitimizing patterns of emotional disengagement or moral abdication that Scripture identifies as destructive.

Devaluation of Mutual Dependence

Christian marriage presupposes mutual reliance and covenantal solidarity. Emotional interdependence is not pathological but redemptive. By pathologizing need and elevating stoicism, Crucible Therapy undermines the logic and purpose of marriage within the Christian life.

Therapeutic Destabilization of the Vulnerable

The deliberate intensification of anxiety may compound harm in couples already contending with trauma or asymmetry. Without a framework of mercy, discernment, and accountability, this method risks exacerbating wounds rather than fostering healing.

Psychological Work as Identity Formation

Crucible Therapy reflects and clinically adopts a broader cultural trend: the belief that personal identity is best discovered through solitary psychological excavation. For Christians, our truest identity is revealed not in looking inward but in looking upward—to God—and outward—to others.

Undermining the Redemptive Power of Weakness

Differentiation therapy often frames strength in a relationship as the ability to withstand emotional storms alone. But Latter-day Saint theology teaches that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, and our spouses as a “help-meet” for those challenges. Schnarch ignores the redemptive capacity of dependence. 

Flattening the Eternal Narrative of Marriage

Perhaps most fundamentally, differentiation therapy assumes marriage is primarily a context for individual growth and erotic renewal. But for Latter-day Saints, marriage is the divine setting for exaltation. While it shares the desire for marriage to be a conduit for individual growth, the Latter-day Saint conception of marriage has a project much more lofty and eternal in mind. 

Secular therapies can’t be expected to fully integrate all gospel understanding. Still, we can avoid the ones whose explicit goals and practices set us toward different goals than those we are pursuing.

Toward a Christological Integration of Differentiation and Unity

The question of how to balance differentiation and unity—how to maintain personal identity while becoming “one” with another—is not merely a psychological puzzle but a theological one. For Christians, the life of Jesus Christ provides the supreme model for how distinctiveness and relational communion are held in perfect harmony. He is not only the exemplar of love but the embodiment of divine identity lived in full self-giving.

Throughout the New Testament, Christ’s actions and teachings demonstrate a perfect union of individual authority and relational surrender. In John 5:30, He declares, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge … because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” Here we see a Savior who is fully self-aware and fully self-sacrificing. His divine agency is never wielded for isolation but always for communion—first with His Father, and then with those He came to redeem.

The pre-mortal Christ likewise demonstrates an integrated identity in His dealings with Israel. In Exodus 3, He reveals Himself as “I AM,” an assertion of sovereign selfhood. Yet He repeatedly binds Himself in covenant to His people, dwelling with them, feeding them, and pleading for their return. His identity is never diluted, but His divine selfhood is always offered for relationship.

In 3 Nephi, the resurrected Lord descends among the Nephites. What does He do? He weeps. He heals. He prays for their unity, invoking the language of divine indwelling: “that they may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee” (3 Nephi 19:23). Here again, the goal is not emotional distance but sanctified closeness. Christ does not ask us to become strong by ourselves. He invites us to be made whole in Him. At no point is differentiation set against unity. Rather, disciples are expected to retain their agency and consecrate it—to grow, yes, but to grow together.

From this Christological lens, differentiation is not a prerequisite for unity, nor is unity a threat to identity. Instead, selfhood and love are co-eternal truths, fulfilled in covenant. The Savior does not command us to “hold onto ourselves” but to take up our cross. He does not sever our personhood; He sanctifies it in communion.

In Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we see the perfect integration of individuality and unity. 

Recommendations for Moving Forward

For Latter-day Saints looking at what kinds of marriage therapy are appropriate for them and their circumstances, I have a few pieces of advice. 

Not all therapists and therapeutic practices are created equal. As mental health resources are often in short supply, it can be tempting to visit the first person with a license and an opening. But it is worth being discerning, especially in a venue where we are opening up our hearts and minds to someone. 

While “Latter-day Saint therapists” can be helpful (if unnecessary) in that journey, be careful to understand whether your therapist merely understands the vocabulary of Latter-day Saints or is committed to helping you maintain your worldview.

Preserve your moral and spiritual lexicon. Grace is not a synonym for internal resilience. Sin is not a developmental stage we grow out of. 

Based on my experience, observations, and analysis, my advice is for Latter-day Saints to exercise considerable caution before engagin in differentiation therapy or working with clinicians who practice it. There are approaches that better align with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and which the evidence shows work better.

David Schnarch’s Crucible/Differentiation Marriage Therapy presents a psychologically articulate, but ultimately inadequate framework for relational transformation. Its emphasis on self-validation, emotional independence, and internal differentiation diverges from the best practices evidence shows work and the covenantal, grace-saturated vision of Christian marriage.

The post When Therapy Undermines Marriage: How Differentiation Fails the Christian Model appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Finding joy in the gospel of Jesus Christ while balancing mental health challenges can sometimes feel impossible. Forces that are difficult to control can prevent us from feeling the influence of the Holy Ghost, perhaps making us question why we keep trying.

Although the Lord has not revealed all the answers to our heartfelt pleadings, He has provided guidance, counsel, comfort, and hope through His prophets and apostles and other Church leaders.

The article “Questions and Answers about Mental Health” from the YA Weekly section of the September 2025 issue of the Liahona gives inspired answers to 11 questions about mental health.

While we don’t know everything now about why many of us battle mental health challenges, we can take heart in the promise that one day we will have a perfect understanding of all things.

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This is the 7th article in our Peacemaking Series. The previous article: The Complex Art of Christian Kindness: Building Bridges

I don’t agree, but I’m not saying anything. 

I’m going to keep my opinion to myself. I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m just trying to avoid contention; I don’t want to argue or start a fight. I want to maintain the peace, get along, and play well with others. If I say something, it’s a party foul: nobody likes a party-pooper, buzzkill, debbie-downer, wet blanket, tight-wad, stickler, contrarian, Nazi, one-upper, smart-aleck, know-it-all, skeptic, cynic, nay-sayer, zealot, fanatic, troublemaker, right-winger, left-winger, fence-sitter anyways! There’s a lot of pressure to choose a side and be a team player. It takes less effort to go with the flow, blend in, keep my head down, and roll with the punches. Right now, I’m being selfish: I need to let others have their turn. It’s important to listen to those you disagree with, be open-minded, and have diversity of thought. If things get out of hand, then the system will correct itself. Plus, it’s not like they’d listen anyways…right?

There are so many “good” reasons to stay quiet.

Many haven’t had effective communication patterns modeled for them. Online, clickbait writing and algorithms tend to exploit extreme opinions and communication tactics, promoting the most extreme and loudest “shouted” opinions because it maximizes engagement. For the same reasons, so many movie conflicts get “resolved” by shouting matches, fist-fights, gun-fights, building smashings, battles, death, and war. Not to say these problems are new; they’re only the most recent evolution in negative gossip and tall tales. We are saturated with extreme portrayals of what disagreements can lead to.

But disagreeing is so important. I’m sure we’ve all felt the crushing blow of accountability when hearing variations of the quote, “Bad men need no better opportunity than when good men look on and do nothing” (Mill). But realistically, not all disagreements are good versus evil; rather, they distinguish among variants of “good, better, best” (Oaks). Unilaterally shared information, collaboration, and perceptive participation are necessary in resolving such issues. 

The seventh of its kind, the following article is a compilation of research used when creating a video for The Skyline Institute’s playful yet informative videos on conflict resolution called the Peacemaking series. This month’s video, “Disagreements Bring Balance,” teaches the value of and tactics for voicing one’s opinion, even when disagreeing.

Our intent is to help people embrace vocal disagreement through an empathetic framework that can align actions with beliefs. There are several contributing factors affecting one’s ability to disagree effectively, such as personality, emotions, and verbal tactics.

What Makes Me So Special?

It is clear our genetics––as much as how we were raised––have a significant influence on our personalities. Psychologists often use the Big Five personality traits—or Five Factor Model (FFM)—to describe our natural tendencies. The traits are Openness (to new experiences), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—often remembered by the acronym OCEAN. For our purposes, Agreeableness is most relevant. Agreeableness describes the tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, and trusting in social interactions. Individuals high in agreeableness are typically described as friendly, patient, and often prioritizing the needs of others––seeking to maintain positive relationships. Personalities oriented toward agreeableness are just going to have a harder time finding the internal motivation to disagree. Those who score low in agreeableness (or high in disagreeableness, depending on how you wish to phrase it) will find the motivation to disagree easier. However, they will find it harder than agreeable people to express their disagreements in a socially effective way.

Consider the irony of staying silent because of wanting to respect and not contradict someone else’s opinion. It’s almost as if saying, Their opinion is important, they should share it, and I should listen to it. In fact, everyone’s opinion is important, everyone should share, and we all should listen. Except for my opinion, I will not share it, and therefore, no one can listen to it. When stated in this way, the illogic is exposed. 

As an example of this same sort of illogic, one co-author of this current video works as a mental health professional at an OCD clinic and interacts with clients who have determined they are unworthy of God’s forgiveness, often diagnosed as scrupulosity. When he asks them, “Who is God willing to forgive?” They reply, “Well, everyone.” He then, smiling, gently asks them, “So what makes you so special?” To which they often chuckle, recognizing their own mistaken perception of themself. So for those of us who don’t share our opinions out loud for fear of whatever reason, consider: What makes me so special that I’m the only exception to the rule ‘every voice matters’, or ‘two heads are better than one’? We invite you to consider yourself responsible for voicing your perspective; every voice matters.

Brene Brown’s research on these ideas clarifies the power of vulnerability. Vulnerability is a social currency that strengthens and deepens relationships. Relationships die when only one side is vulnerable. Internally, if I consistently diminish and disregard my own voice by not sharing my opinions out loud, I reinforce a negative perception of my own thoughts and ideas or a negative perception of other people’s opinions about my thoughts and ideas; and, repetitive silence can lead to resentment and emotion bottling. Externally, it will eventually impact my relationships with others “because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly” (Brown). Instantly obliging without voicing one’s opinion excludes the other participants from the opportunity of increased perspective and possible collaboration (to be explored more in an upcoming article). Intrapersonally and interpersonally, a deep sense of connection can only come from authenticity: letting go of who one thinks they should be in order to be who they are. The principle of sharing isn’t just for kindergarten. To truly connect with others, we also have to share our honest thoughts and feelings—starting with ourselves.

Some might not share because they think other people aren’t worthy of their opinion. It’s worth considering whether that reluctance comes from a place of insecurity masked as arrogance—often, what looks like detachment is a quiet need for compassion.

Tactics for Assertive Communication

With motivation lined up inside of an empathy-oriented framework that is mutual empathy toward self and others, we can move on to verbal strategies that help structure disagreements effectively. Last month, we highlighted the importance of curiosity—like asking questions and restating the opposing view before expressing disagreement. This month, we share tools for expressing disagreement. These help foster “emotional safety” in our relationships.

Assertive communication clearly states personal needs with consideration for the needs of others. This is in contrast to passive or aggressive communication. Passive communication is preoccupied with the needs of others, inappropriately apologetic, and timid or silent. Aggressive communication focuses only on personal needs, often with an intensity, blame, or shame at the expense of others. Then, of course, there is that toxic cocktail of passive-aggressive communication that shames others while never clearly expressing personal needs. Just like other problems, the best way to address passive-aggression from others is not to ignore it (that would be passive), or by attacking it head-on (that’s aggressive), but by 1. keeping emotions in check, 2. directly addressing the negative behavior, and 3. asking direct questions. For example, you might say calmly, “It looked to me like you rolled your eyes. That makes me feel small and disrespected. I think I’ve upset you—do you want to talk about it?” This is what assertive language reads like; it clearly states personal needs; it is unambiguous and addresses the actual issue (which is not eye-rolling); and, it creates space for them to express their needs and feelings; also, it doesn’t force a conversation. However, even if the language is assertive, but the emotion is uncontrolled, then the communication is no longer assertive: the emotional intensity tips it into aggressive communication. The manner of conduct and the language expressed contribute to the quality of communication, whether it’s aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, or assertive. 

Communication that is couched in personal experience doesn’t shift blame and direct anger toward other people. Instead, it focuses on personal feelings and personal perceptions of the situation. The Gottmans––marriage relationship experts––recommend using “I statements” or “I language” as a technique for verbally structuring disagreements. Begin any statement with an “I,” and make sure what follows is factual information from your own perspective. For example, an “I think…”, “I feel…”, or “I noticed…” are all particularly good ways to generate a “soft start” in a disagreement. This isn’t an excuse to say something like, “I think you waste your time on video games.” That’s still blaming and shaming the other person. Instead, describing without placing judgment, like “I’m worried you’re spending too much of your time on video games,” would be way better. Better yet, adding “… and I think it could be affecting your grades and relationships. I want to see you succeed and spend more time with you myself. Can you help me understand this from your perspective?” The real concern is addressed, vulnerability is shared, and an abundance of space has been created for the other person to share their feelings. There’s a chance the person could be wasting their time, but the latter conversation could foster an environment for the next Shigeru Miyamoto. 

Lastly, we offer the tool of talking in parts as a way of exploring and giving voice to the complex array of emotional nuances inside of oneself, especially when in a conflict. This technique draws from therapeutic models like Internal Family Systems (IFS), which recognize that we often have multiple internal perspectives. “Part of me wants to, but another part of me doesn’t.” One of the benefits is that there’s no limit to how many parts of you there are; “Part of me feels angry, but part of me gets where you’re coming from, and another part of me doesn’t want me to admit that.”

Closing Exercises

As our last exercise, let’s construct a “soft start” for an argument. Think of the last conflict you had or one that’s preoccupying your mind right now. Surely something came up. For the sake of exercise, let’s go with it. No scenario works out perfectly, but assuming the best, let’s apply the techniques in this article. 

1. What am I feeling? Emotions—like awkwardness, frustration, or fear—usually pass within 10–90 seconds. Instead of pushing them away, notice what you’re feeling and name it. Then choose how to respond. For the sake of the exercise, name the emotion, and accept it. Whether it sticks around depends on how we react to it, our thoughts, and our actions. So, what am I gonna do? Let’s decide to say something—which might not be appropriate for every situation (more on that in a future article), but for the sake of the exercise, let’s play it out in our mind.

2. What questions should I ask? Find my curiosity. Foster a feeling of goodwill. Ask as many clarifying questions as necessary. Do not try to trap or blame, seek understanding. For the sake of the exercise, think of at least 2-3 questions that could help or would have helped.

3. What is their perspective? Restate their perspective for them to hear in a way with which they would be completely satisfied and wholeheartedly agree. It is a generous and compassionate perspective of the other person, not some reduced characterization or strawman. We must steelman their argument and maybe even take the time to consider, Do I really disagree? At the very least, what do we agree on? Vocalize what you agree on. For the sake of the exercise, restate their opinion in the best version you can consider.

4. Share my perspective. Use assertive language. State actual needs and feelings. Use “I statements” or talk in “parts” to help. Avoid shame, and seek the deeper connection your vulnerability has enabled. For the sake of the exercise, structure an example of using at least one “I statement” and one talking in “parts”.

Depending on the situation, these steps may not always happen in the same order. But generally, understanding the other person (Step 3) follows curiosity (Step 2). And, Step 4 often clarifies Step 1 as we speak out loud.

May you find belonging and a deeper connection, and make more peace within yourself and your relationships.

The Peacemaking Series

You can view the rest of the videos in the Peacemaking Series HERE on YouTube. Each month, a companion article is released with new tools and insights. Next month’s topic is Forgiveness. To explore more articles by The Skyline Institute published in Public Square Magazine, visit us HERE. You’ll also find our original research supporting The Family Proclamation, along with videos and podcasts, at TheFamilyProclamation.org. Follow us on social media for more.

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