How can I include LaTeX section headers as separate sections in a table of contents created with Rmarkdown in pdf_document2 format?

Question

I'm trying to create a table of contents with Rmarkdown in pdf_document2 format. However, some of my section headers are just new pages with latex text in them that I would like to be considered a separate section of the table of contents. Here's an example of what I have, (also apologies in advance, I'm new to stack):

---

enter code here
---
output:
  bookdown::pdf_document2:
    fig_caption: yes
    toc: no
    lof: yes
    lot: yes
    keep_tex: yes
  pdf_document:
    toc: no
  bookdown::html_document2:
    fig_caption: yes
    toc: no
  word_document: default
bibliography:
- Thesis_Citations.bib
- R_Citations.bib
csl: apa.csl
header-includes: \usepackage{setspace}\doublespacing \usepackage{lineno} \usepackage{placeins}
---

\\begin{center}

\\textbf{\\MY THESIS TITLE which I have in latex because of formatting requirements}

\\textsc{More formatting things} \\vspace{3 mm}

\\end{center}

\\newpage

# TABLE OF CONTENTS

\\tableofcontents

\\listoffigures

\\listoftables

\\newpage

# THESIS INTRODUCTION

Some introductory things

\\begin{center}

\\textbf{\\Large CHAPTER I: MY FIRST CHAPTER TITLE which I have in latex for formatting reasons}

\\textsc{More formatting}

\\end{center}

# CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

More stuff

\\newpage

\\begin{center}

\\textbf{\\Large CHAPTER II: MY SECOND CHAPTER TITLE which I have in latex for formatting reasons}

\\textsc{More formatting}

\\end{center}

# CHAPTER II INTRODUCTION

More stuff

---

The above gives me the following output:

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
List of Tables
2 THESIS INTRODUCTION
3 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
4 CHAPTER II INTRODUCTION

Where I would really like to have:

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures
List of Tables
2 INTRODUCTION
3 CHAPTER I TITLE
3.1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
4 CHAPTER II TITLE
4.1 CHAPTER II INTRODUCTION

How do I fix this?

• I have toc: no in the yaml because it would put the table of contents before the title page
• Changing toc_depth doesn't help because I'm not trying to change the # headers