Mormon Stories Podcast My Mormon Mission in Russia Almost Broke Me - Kyson Dana | Ep. 2111
Border Bribes And War Zones
- Visa renewals forced missionaries to cross dangerous Ukraine borders where soldiers harassed and extorted them for bribes.
- Kyson learned to hide cash and teach new missionaries how to navigate the intimidating checkpoints safely.
Goals Turn Faith Into Pressure
- Mission leadership set unreachable baptism goals, turning faith into a performance metric and deepening missionaries' self-blame.
- Prophetic rhetoric (e.g., "come home in a coffin") amplified pressure and discouraged reporting struggles.
Hare Krishna Crossroads
- Kyson briefly considered leaving Mormonism for Hare Krishna after meeting chanting devotees and reading the Bhagavad Gita.
- A Krishna teacher told him "you look like you were born to be a really good Mormon," which redirected him to practice listening and validating people's meaning instead.
⚠️Trigger Warning: This episode includes discussions of violence, self-harm, suicide, and religious trauma.
In this deeply vulnerable and wide-ranging conversation, Kyson Dana shares his story of growing up Mormon, serving a mission in Russia, and the lifelong psychological, spiritual, and physical consequences that followed. What was supposed to be the “best two years” of his life became the most traumatic –shaping his identity, mental health, and eventual departure from the Church.
Kyson opens up about generational trauma, internalized shame, self-policing, and suicidal ideation in his youth. He walks us through the intense pressure to be perfect, the weaponization of guilt and obedience, and how Mormonism taught him to disconnect from himself in order to survive.
We dive deeply into the realities of missionary life in Russia: shrinking missions, violence, threats, abductions, murders, leadership silence, and explicit instructions NOT to tell families what was happening. Kyson recounts being told not to come home unless it was “in a coffin,” enduring extreme fasting, psychological abuse, and witnessing acts of violence that were never processed or acknowledged.
Beyond the mission, Kyson shares how this trauma followed him into adulthood –fueling panic disorder, Complex PTSD, and a prolonged faith crisis. He discusses therapy, EMDR, creative work, and the careful, supported use of psychedelics as part of healing. We also explore his work helping teens navigate shame-based purity culture, pornography narratives (“Fight the new drug!”), and the dangerous conflation of morality with normal human behavior.
This episode is about far more than Mormonism –it’s about identity, belonging, survival, and what it takes to come back to yourself after an institution teaches you to turn yourself off.
If you’ve ever felt broken by a system that promised salvation, you’re not alone.
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