93: Understanding a Healthy Dynamic Between Church Leaders & Members

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Series Title: Analysis of E. Hamilton “Why a Church? [Part II of II]

In this episode, Valerie looks a psychological lens to explain some of the dynamics at play between some current spokespeople for the LDS church and those who are asking for dialogue and change in a variety of areas.

As an intimate relationship therapist, Valerie frequently works with couples and helps them with struggles around the issue of power, growth, and fear. These very same concepts can be superimposed onto other relationships, and in this episode, Valerie demonstrates how some church spokespeople and many faith-expanding church members might be seen as locked in a struggle for healthy identity development, just as some individuals struggle in their intimate relationships.

The good news? This is normal, expected, and the only way to relationship health in the long run. In both settings, what begins as the perfect romance [the perfect church, the perfect lover] MUST give way to what really "is"...which brings up grieve, protest, denial, and eventually growth, if both parties recognize that the early “romance” was based on an illusion.

Valerie also talks about what happens when the initially more empowered party in the relationship does not WANT to end the "romance" stage of the relationship and she gives possible reasons for why the empowered “caregiver” struggles giving up their role when the less empowered party wakes up and begins to self define. Valerie is hoping that this episode might propose a psychologically grounded answer to the "why are they acting this way?" questions regarding recent combative discourse.

Link to the speech