How many of our readers who served a mission continue to have “mission dreams” in which you are back on your mission, but then you realize that it’s not right because back home you have a family and you’re married? Or, for those who no longer attend church, do you sometimes dream that you are in the temple or in a church service? Similarly, have you dreamt that you were back in school, but you couldn’t find your locker or your class schedule, or you suddenly realized that you forgot to attend classes for an entire semester and today was the big test? In the waking world, how often have you had a fight with your spouse or a parent and replayed that exchange over and over in your mind, reliving the argument, thinking of better comebacks or the thing they said that really wounded you? Have you heard church members say “People can leave the church, but they can’t leave it alone.” These may all be examples of something called the Zeigarnik effect.
In 1927, Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was inspired by her mentor Kurt Lewin who noticed that the most skilled waiters could remember the details and specifics of orders customers gave them verbally with complete accuracy, but they quickly forgot the orders once they handed them off to kitchen staff. Their task was to deliver the accurate order to the kitchen. If they mentally took reponsibility to also ensure the order was completed with accuracy, they would then forget the orders after the bill was paid and the customers left the restaurant.
Zeigarnik created an experiment based on this observation to see what would happen if participants were given specific, detailed tasks, but interrupted before the tasks were completed. Would they forget the details or recall them even more vividly? What she found was that those who were prevented from completing the tasks had much more accurate and longer recollection of the tasks than the uninterrupted participants had. The tension caused by this “unfinished business” gave the tasks a staying power that completing the task erased. This is in part due to the mental “to-do” list that we all carry around with us (emotional labor in feminist terms); if an item is not finished, we have to hold onto it mentally until it is. There is mental tension, like a cliffhanger in a TV series, that holds our attention to the details before there is a resolution. (This effect is in fact deliberately used by show-runners for this very reason).
So, how does this apply to religion? Religious experiences are often emotionally fraught, tied up in personal identity, childhood perspectives, family dynamics, and purpose-driven behavior. Here are some ways in which this can manifest:
Unresolved beliefs. People in religions, particularly ones with fundamentalist views, often hold contradictory beliefs. These paradoxes create cognitive dissonance loops that can never be fully resolved; the theology itself forbids closure. These ideas create chronic low-level rumination, feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety, or obsessive theological analysis. For example:
- “You are a child of God” and “You are unworthy of God’s love and the approval of good people unless you do X,Y, and Z”
- “You have agency” vs. “Disobedience leads to eternal loss”
- “The human condition involves suffering” and “You can prevent suffering through your obedience.”
Interrupted Identity Development. One’s sense of identity includes their place in the community they belong to. Leaving one’s religion throws that identity into question. Your sense of self, belonging, your social worth, and your core narrative are all interrupted and have not yet been replaced. The Zeigarnik effect forces your mind to revisit the “unfinished story,” to make sense of the loss of self and place. This is of course not solely something that happens in religion. It’s also very much what happens when a marriage ends and to a lesser extent when you move to a completely new location where you don’t know anyone.
Unfinished God Business. When you leave a faith, your relationship with that religion is ruptured by disillusionment and often social rejection. Some of that rejection is from the community, but it’s far more traumatic the closer to home it hits. Additionally, you are renegotiating your relationship with God, your worldview, the rituals that brought meaning to you previously (whether you liked them or not), and religious authority (again, regardless of how you felt about them). Particularly with these larger non-personal relationships, you can’t simply “talk it out” or try to find a way forward in your relationship. You can’t expect to get a satisfying apology from people you don’t know, like religious leaders, and you also may never get one from people you do know. Additionally, while religions all have some kind of entry ritual (e.g. baptism), there is almost never an exit ritual, well, other than death.
Unresolved Moral Conditioning. In high-control religions (ones with rules for conduct like the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, church attendance, profanity), obedience and purity (or “worthiness”) are deeply moralized, tied to cosmic justice. When someone leaves such a system, they may feel that their moral compass is broken. I once had a conversation with an LDS colleague who said that his brother-in-law left the church and became an atheist and then cheated on his wife. The way he said it implied that all atheists behave immorally, and I objected strenuously. I said, “Sounds like your brother-in-law was an asshole, but I don’t see how that was caused by his atheism.” If we are accustomed to an external moral compass (the church or its leaders), then when that is removed, it’s confusing. How do you know if you are a good person without those external markers of success?
When I was in college on the other side of the country, my parents moved from the state I grew up in, the place where all my school and church friends were. This was before email was even a thing, believe it or not, much less social media, and long distance phone calls were expensive. I felt completely cut off from the place my mind considered to be my home, although it was true that I no longer had even one family member there. This unresolved tension manifested in a recurring dream I had in which I was in a city about thirty miles from my hometown, but I only had a bicycle to get there, and I couldn’t remember which roads to take. Night was falling. I cycled and cycled, but I never reached my home before I woke up, yearning for a place that was no longer accessible. I had this dream frequently when I was in my twenties and thirties, but then I went back for a visit. I saw my friends, I walked down the lanes and railroad tracks, by the river, drove through my high school and elementary school parking lots, and even toured through my old house thanks to a really nice home-owner who had bought it from my parents and still remembered them. The dreams stopped. I have been able to keep myself connected to what I consider my home in meaningful ways since that time, and the dreams haven’t returned.
Certain religious environments accidentally reinforce Zeigarnik loops:
- Perfectionism theology – “Be ye therefore perfect.”
- Conditional belonging – “If you are worthy…”
- Guilt-based control systems – constant self-audit for sin.
- Ambiguous doctrines – salvation as never quite secure.
When the “task” of being good enough never ends, believers live in chronic cognitive and emotional tension — the same mechanism Zeigarnik found in unsolved puzzles. It would be more accurate in these cases to say “People can leave the church, but the church never leaves them alone,” and not in the way many ex-Mos mean it (e.g. the missionaries or ward members keep contacting you even when you say you aren’t interested).
This becomes even more complicated when you consider that those who were raised in the Church have also bonded with it as a pseudo-parent, an attachment system. Maybe I’ll talk about that in another post.
- Have you experienced dreams related to unresolved trauma like college, mission service, the temple or the church? Would you share what you dreamed? Did those dreams resolve or do you still have them sometimes?
- Have you experienced Zeigarnik effect? Did you eventually resolve it?
- If you were to advise someone how to resolve religious trauma, what would you say?
- If you created an “exit ritual” for the Church, what would it be?
- Do you think Zeigarnik effect is just as common to those still in the church (e.g. mission dreams) as it is to those who have left?
- Is it unjust to tell former church members that they can “leave the church but they can’t leave it alone” given how the mind works?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I regularly have those recurring mission nightmares, I mean dreams.
On leaving the church, I remain in some sense. But I’ve long been out mentally and set rigid boundaries. I generally refuse callings, I didn’t give talks or lessons, I don’t go to the temple or get a temple recommend, and I don’t attend tithing settlement. What I’ve had to do is build a narrative in my mind for possible interactions. I’ve crafted these narratives for years and replay them in my mind over and over to refine them. How often have I actually deployed these narratives to others? I can count on one hand the times I have. But I need to have these in reserve just in case. I need to have them in my mind so that 1) I don’t get manipulated to compromise on a boundary and end up agreeing to a situation I don’t want to be in, 2) I can have hard conversations without offending others, and 3) feel better about myself. My advice to anyone trying to leave but knowing they must maintain relationships with believers is to meticulously craft these narratives. Think of lots of possible scenarios and play them out over and over. When it happens in real time, it happens fast and you need that muscle memory to guide you the way through.
Interesting post. I’m guessing the power of “unfinished business” or “open loops” to dog your mind and memory is dependent on how important you sincerely feel those items are. It’s like bureaucracy, whether government or the military or work or church. Bureaucracies and bureaucrats want you to do certain things, sometimes because they are important but often because they are just part of the system or even because they just like to push you around. Sometimes it is just pure manipulation. How do we navigate bureaucracies? Generally not just “doing what we’re told.” We might do some things on the list (just to keep them off our backs) but we navigate around some things and simply ignore others.
So a big question for Church people is: Do you approach the demands of LDS bureaucracy, the whole “system,” like they really know what they are talking about, like they care about your well-being, and that everything they tell you to do is oh so important so you put your shoulder to the wheel, every week? Or do you approach it like a bureaucracy you have to deal with: do some things, work around other things, and simply ignore some things? I think more and more active LDS are thinking like the whole Church system is a bureaucracy to navigate rather than a divine program for salvation. When most things are work arounds and ignorables, you don’t have dreams or nightmares about them.
I am guessing this Zeigarnik effect does not work in those of us with ADHD. One of the deficits is the inability to hold a mental list. Like I tell my child, “go upstairs and tell Dad supper is ready and then wash your hands.” This child managed the upstairs part of the list, then her brain short circuited. I have to mentally rehearse such lists, and if there is an interruption, the list is gone gone gone, not remember with anxiety and greater clarity. I won’t go into the anxiety this inability causes.
But, to your discussion. My TBM husband still has those mission dreams, but then he was sent home early. He got very sick, didn’t get better under the incompetent care provided by the cheapest doctor around which was what the church was willing to pay for, and of course he was forbidden to tell his parents how sick he was. So, eventually a visiting GA who was a doctor in previous life saw him and yelled about the incompetent doctor using medieval methods, and sent him back to the US for real medical care. My TBM son also still has them and his mission was traumatic, but not shortened.
So, I think mission dreams are more about the trauma of impossible expectations, and less about unfinished business.
I have church related nightmares. The only repeating one is about being in a dark church building with endless dark halls and no exits, sort of like the Hotel California—you can never leave, or the mines of Moria- we cannot get out.
Other nightmares about church were about how women were neglected, or not being good enough. Not like the school dreams where you have forgotten things or not done what needed to be done. So, for me, church dreams have never been about any kind of unfinished business, things not done, or things I had any control over, like whether or not one gets dressed before going out in public. They were about helplessness in the face of being inherently not good enough.
Now that I am comfortably out, the dreams have stopped.
You know what I consider unfinished business? It’s the LDS idea that I’m shooting for the Celestial Kingdom and that unless I endure to the end I’m not going to make it. Thus, I can live a totally temple worthy life but if I blow it at the end I’m not going to make it. So I never really feel like I’ve accomplished anything long-lasting because you just never know. Very unsatisfying. (side note: in this scenario you are often forced to place the Church or the doctrine above friends or family and that’s definitely unsatisfying).
I contrast that to my life outside of religion. In this scenario, every day counts. I’m not shooting for eternal glory. I’m simply trying to make solid healthy decisions day-to-day. It’s not that I don’t have longer-term goals. It’s simply that I care more about current life RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW than hypothetical future life somewhere else. And that includes maintaining the healthiest relationships possible without letting a religion/corporation get between us.
To me this is all pretty simple now but boy did I not see it when I was fully “in”.
I’m not convinced my brain processes correctly. When I began working as a patent searcher I had very stressful dreams. The working day would be spent with a long lists of patent numbers. For each number I had to find the relevant bound volume in the patent library, check the document, and determine whether it was required for the particular search I was doing. For the first weeks I literally dreamt of lists of numbers scrolling past my eyes, and would be getting more and more anxious during the dream. I loved the job, and was very good at it, but I didn’t know how much more I could take of scrolling numbers every night. I was also newly married, and asked my husband to give me a blessing. I think it’s the only time I was told in a blessing, there’s something wrong with my brain, but if I did A then things would be okay. A was going to the record office near where I worked and look up some things in the birth / marriage registers that my mother had asked me to do for family history. Needless to say I made certain to head over there in my lunch break, and complete my mother’s task. The number scrolling dreams stopped. Was this a way of tricking my brain into registering my work tasks completed, which clearly hadn’t been happening before, I am wondering now.
When my kids were going away to university I would have university accommodation nightmares. The week before we took the eldest I dreamt the hall of residence was a warehouse-like building, and the student rooms very much like the inner rooms in a large tent; canvas and suspended from tubular frames in the warehouse. The front of each room was mesh, so that it was possible to see into each room, and there were no locks; the mesh section unzipped to allow entry and exit.
I have lots of dreams about trying to visit places, lots of transport problem dreams, lots of holiday accommodation dreams.
I had recurring mission dreams quite regularly for decades (I am in my fifties). However, a few years ago they completely stopped…in what I believe is quite probably an interesting W&T kind of way.
First off, I want to be clear that I’ve never felt personally traumatized as a Church member. To be very brief, I feel like my Church experience was very positive from childhood through my mission. I had a very good mission president and a very positive mission experience. I definitely consider my mission to have been a lot of hard work, and I was certainly ready to be done when my 2 years was up, but I was quite happy through most of my mission (the main exceptions to that were due to having to grind through living with 2 very, very difficult companions 24/7 for a few months each). My adult experience in the Church is not as positive, but it’s also generally not terrible, either.
Like I said, I haven’t had a mission dream for a few years. Prior to that, I had 2 types of mission dreams that I experienced pretty regularly:
1. The first kind of dream is a nightmare. It’s just the whole mission grind all over again. Sweating through extremely hot and humid weather. Talking to stranger after stranger who only wants to practice their broken English rather than talking about the Church. Hearing the same “not interested” rejection responses over and over again. Constantly feeling tired. It’s all the stuff that really made me look forward to returning home at the end of my mission. This is actually the less common form of mission dream I had.
2. The second kind of dream is not a nightmare. It’s kind of like a suspenseful movie or play. The exact details of this form of mission dream can vary, but the plotline is always the same. The dream usually just starts out with me on a mission again to either the same mission or at least the same country that I served my actual mission. This isn’t supposed to happen, right? After all, young people are only allowed to serve one mission. However, dreams aren’t always logical, and this form of dream simply doesn’t include the confusing part about how I ended up on a second mission in the first place. In any case, in this form of the dream, it’s very suspenseful because it turns out that I actually want to be on a second mission. Before I was married, in the dream I wanted to be on the second mission because I didn’t have to deal with college classes and exams. After marriage and having children, in the dream I wanted to be on the second mission–and didn’t want to be exposed and sent home–because I didn’t have to go to my job and fulfill all of my challenging responsibilities with my wife and kids. In other words, in the dream, being on the second mission allows me to escape from whatever are my biggest problems in life at the time. I mean, that can be one nice thing about missions, right? The Church takes all of your other responsibilities and concerns away from you, and all you have to worry about is one thing: following the mission program (I was going to say “share the gospel” instead of “follow the mission program”, but unfortunately, those two things are often at odds with one another.). The suspenseful part of this dream is how long I can stay on my mission before being detected as an illicit two term missionary and being sent home to face reality again. I have to do my best to pretend that my language skills in the mission language are at the expected level for a first time missionary rather than being much more fluent due to my previous mission experience. Unfortunately, sometimes I slip up, speak too fluently, which raises suspicion (does no one actually believe in the “gift of tongues”?), and I’m exposed and sent home. I also have to be very careful to dodge people that knew me from when I previously served as a missionary (because I’m in the same mission/country again!). Sometimes my schemes (which even have included using disguises!) work, but sometimes I am discovered, reported, and sent home. Receiving the “transfer letter” in the mail where I’m sent to an area I previously served during my first mission is never a good omen. Sometimes my wife or home ward somehow suspects that I’ve secretly managed to serve another mission and notify the Church mission department, and I’m called in to some Church leader’s office to be interrogated to determine whether I’m a legitimate first time missionary or a slacker husband and father that is using a second mission to shirk his responsibilities. However it happens, my identity as an imposter is unfortunately always exposed, at which point I wake up. The dream never continues through the obvious next steps where I’m put on a plane home, forced to make a shameful appearance in front of my wife, kids, home ward, etc. I don’t know why the dream always terminates at this point–I guess reality really is subconsciously that scary for me? This second form of my mission dreams is actually the more common of the two.
So what happened? Why am I not having mission dreams any longer after pretty regularly having them for decades? Well, it’s impossible to be certain, but I have thought about this quite a bit, and I strongly suspect that it is not a coincidence that my mission dreams stopped not very long after I started commenting on W&T, which includes a number of comments about LDS missions and my own mission experiences. I also attribute starting to comment on W&T to a general increase in happiness and life satisfaction. Now remember, I wasn’t an unhappy, traumatized Church member before. At least, not consciously. However, I think that there were a lot of things relating to the Church running through my head–mostly subconciously, so I wasn’t aware of them. I think it’s very likely that these things were triggering the mission dreams and leading me to be less happy and peaceful than I otherwise would be.
Stuff about the Church was just bottled up inside me with no outlet, and it was likely causing the mission dreams and leading to less happiness and peace in life. I can’t really talk to my wife about these things Thankfully, she is reasonable and isn’t going to get super angry or threaten divorce, but she is pretty orthodox and simply isn’t interested in hearing my unorthodox thoughts on Church stuff. I haven’t connected with any ward members that I know are safe to speak with without being shunned. In short, I had no real outlet for these real thoughts and feelings that I had about the Church. They were all bottled up inside me with nowhere to go, so they caused (I suspect) strange dreams and less satisfaction with life. I truly believe that having an outlet like W&T where I can say what I actually think and feel about the Church has been therapeutic for me. Just letting this stuff flow out of me and into blog comments has (I suspect) made the mission dreams go away and increased my life satisfaction level.
My recurring dream is strange and I don’t know what to make of it. In them I wake up snuggled up to random church adult males that I served with. They are not sexual dreams. I’m male hetero and fully supportive of LGBT issues (one reason I left the church) but there’s definitely something happening subconsciously, lol.
The topic I want to comment on particularly is the idea of leaving the church but not leaving it alone. There are 100 reasons this idea invalid, but the main ones for me are:
– I donated a great deal of money to the church
– I donated the two of the best years of my life to the church (years 19 and 20) when I should have been at college
– I spent countless hours in music callings and as bishop and high councilor when I should have been with family or at work or having fun.
– The relentless GUILT!
– I’m married to an active Mormon, so as much as I’d like to never hear about asinine church news or policies, that will never be an option for me. Sort of like with a divorce, your ex will still be part of your life…
Exmos have every right to harbor anger and resentment. Thankfully I’m past those stages but to skip them would be extremely unhealthy.
During the first decade or so after my mission I occasionally had dreams of being called to go back out again under some new church initative. They were never focued on any specific mission experiences per se. I think it was probably my mind wrestling with the question of how I would handle being asked to do it all again. I had a positive mission experience but by the end I was very much ready to move on with my life, and generally I think the mission program is asking a lot of everyone involved. I haven’t had dreams like that in a very long time, but also I now have very different attitudes now about how much of myself I’m willing to give to the church. I still accept callings but always after a discussion about time commitments and boundaries.
As far as other dreams I’ve had, when my student days were more recent there used to be a lot of dreams about flunking classes, usually involving scenarios of forgetting to do big things, or even forgetting that I’d signed up for a particular class that I’d never attended. I would chalk those up to stress about all of the things to keep track of as a student and a general fear of failure. I’ve not had those in a long time either. I mean, I graduated, with multiple degrees now, so I guess I don’t need to worry about failure so much now, and my work life does seem a bit simpler than school life in some ways.