Laos
Men in Laos are settling. Elder X has been through bipolar, psych wards, religious trauma, and came out the other side. He gives personal advice — not therapy — for $250/week. Elder X speaks English. Submit your message in your language. He will respond to every person. We will use translation tools to communicate.
Religious context: Theravada Buddhist majority (~65%) with traditional folk religion and small Christian minority (~2%) facing state pressure.
Personal advice, not therapy. Email is free.
The Shape of Leaving in Laos
Laos is Buddhist as a country. The dominant religious context is: Theravada Buddhist majority (~65%) with traditional folk religion and small Christian minority (~2%) facing state pressure.
Laos is mostly Buddhist or Buddhist-cultural, and a Western-style deconstruction is rarer here than in monotheistic-majority countries. The harder exits in Laos are usually from the new religious movements, from Christian missionary churches, or from Jehovah’s Witnesses. Pick the pillar page that fits the specific community you came out of.
Leaving in Laos mostly costs you on a family scale rather than a community or legal scale. The conversations are real and sometimes painful, but the wider society is not configured to punish unbelief.
What Leaving Looks Like in Laos
The United States dropped over 2 million tons of bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973 — more than it dropped on Germany and Japan combined during WWII — and then forgot about it. The men who farm in Xieng Khouang, Savannakhet, and Salavan provinces do so among cluster munitions that look like toys and detonate when touched. Over 20,000 Laotians have been killed by UXO since the bombing ended, predominantly men and boys. The bomb is the defining feature of Laotian masculine life: not because men are warriors, but because they are farmers on a battlefield that never stopped being active.
The communist government's control of information and assembly means that organized male support is essentially impossible. Buddhist monasteries offer the only structured male space, and temporary ordination remains a common masculine milestone, but the monastery's emphasis on detachment and acceptance can function as spiritual suppression rather than healing. The dam-building boom — massive hydroelectric projects that have earned Laos the title "Battery of Southeast Asia" — has displaced thousands of families from ancestral land, and the men in these communities lose not just their homes but their identity as river fishermen and forest gardeners. Meanwhile, the country's extremely limited mental health infrastructure — among the worst ratios of psychiatrists to population in the world — means that Laotian men who develop any form of psychological distress have essentially no professional support available.
Challenges Men Face Here
Pillar Pages for Laos
Which tradition you came out of matters more than what country you are in. These pillar pages are written specifically for the religious traditions most present in Laos.
Leaving Evangelical Christianity
For people deconstructing from American evangelical Christianity, non-denominational megachurches, Southern Baptist, and conservative Protestant traditions. Honest writing about losing your faith, your tribe, and the certainty you used to have.
Leaving Pentecostal & Charismatic
For people leaving Pentecostal, charismatic, Word of Faith, IFB, or Apostolic churches. Speaking in tongues, prophetic words, faith healing, demons under every rock — and what it does to a body to come out of all of it.
Topics Most Relevant in Laos
The texture of the family rupture, the guilt, and the rebuild varies by country. These after-leaving pages tend to be the most useful for people from Laos.
The guilt that does not switch off
For people who left their religion and still feel guilty for things that used to be sins. Why the guilt persists, what it actually is, and what reliably helps it loosen.
Finding friends after the church
For people who lost their friend group when they left the religion they were raised in. Honest writing on how adult friendships actually form, and why the loneliness after leaving is not permanent.
What do you actually believe now
For people in deconstruction who do not know what they believe anymore. Why the question is harder than it looks, why you do not have to answer it on a deadline, and a few things that have helped people find their way.
Cities in Laos
24 cities in Laos. The texture of leaving is often more local than national \u2014 leaving Catholicism in Salt Lake City is not the same as leaving the LDS Church in Salt Lake City, and city-level context matters.
From Laos? Tell Me What You Grew Up In.
What you were raised on. What started cracking. Where you are now. Be as specific as you can. I read every message myself and reply within a day or two.
Personal advice, not therapy. Email is free.