Deconstructing Faith: How Therapy Can Help
Religion is supposed to be a place where we can find healing, answers, and guidance. Unfortunately, too often, religion is instead a place where we find hurt, abuse, or shame.
Having these types of painful experiences within a religious or spiritual context can feel isolating and confusing, and even leave us rethinking our morals or values.
The term “deconstruction” is often used to describe the process of questioning or re-examining your religious values. This might mean redefining your beliefs, challenging the morals you were taught to believe, or even beginning to explore parts of your identity that may have previously been neglected or compartmentalized due to religious teachings. Deconstruction may lead to incorporating new beliefs and spiritual practices or potentially leaving religion altogether.
Whether you are questioning your long-held religious beliefs, considering leaving a faith community, or redefining what spirituality means to you, it’s likely that this process might bring up some strong emotions. Many people often experience emotions such as grief, fear, loneliness, or anger on their path to deconstruction. If religion has been a core part of your identity, walking away from it can feel like losing a part of yourself.
Spirituality is a part of the human experience, but it doesn’t exist only within the four walls of a church. If you’ve experienced pain at the hands of religious leaders, communities, or teachings, understanding or redefining what spirituality means for you can feel daunting. Spirituality isn’t one-size-fits-all and therapy isn’t either. For some, the end goal of therapy might be to leave old belief systems behind, while for others it might be to return to them with a fresh perspective.
Psychological impacts of religious trauma might include:
Chronic guilt and shame from purity culture teachings, including being told you are “impure”
Anxiety and fear of punishment (i.e. fear of hell, the “wrath of God”, or feelings of moral inadequacy)
Isolation due to loss of community and support systems
Identity confusion due to feeling othered or being told who you were was “sinful”
Lack of self-trust from being taught to rely solely on religious teachings, leaders, or doctrine (i.e. Scripture such as Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” being misused or taught through a coercive lens)
Religious trauma resulting from someone using a position of power, a religious doctrine, or a belief system to coerce, control, or manipulate the behavior or wellbeing of another person
How Therapy Can Help:
Create a judgement-free space
It can feel scary opening up to someone else about your spiritual questions or doubts, especially if you’ve been taught that doing so might be sinful. In therapy, you can rest assured that you won’t be met with judgment or shame, and that all of your innermost thoughts will be kept confidential. Whether you have experienced religious abuse, spiritual trauma, been negatively impacted by purity culture, or want a safe space to reexamine your beliefs, your therapist can help to identify your unique concerns and the ways that you have been impacted by religion.
Process doubts, fears, and unresolved emotions
If you need to work through the confusion of being hurt in religious spaces, deconstruct old frameworks, or start to make sense of who you are in a new context, therapy can help. A trauma-informed therapist can support your deconstruction journey and help you begin to process your fears or unresolved emotions.
Rebuilding relationships and community support
Leaving or questioning your faith can sometimes damage relationships with friends and family. Stepping away from a church community or other religious group can often feel isolating and overwhelming. In therapy for religious trauma, you can learn to set boundaries with loved ones who may not understand your journey, process the loss of community connections, and begin to rebuild new support networks. Talking to a therapist who understands can also help you to feel less alone in your process of deconstruction.
Self-Acceptance and Identity Exploration
Religion can be a core part of a person’s identity, and deciding to walk away from it can bring up questions of meaning and purpose. In therapy, you can begin to explore and redefine your identity outside of a religious framework.
Purity culture and other strict religious teachings often include heteronormative assumptions about sexuality and gender or invalidate the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals altogether. Along with this, there are often harmful stereotypes forced onto people of all gender and sexual identities, including expecting men to be “masculine” and women to be “feminine” and “pure.” There is typically no mention of other gender identities outside of the female/male binary, although people of all identities exist in religious settings. Due to this, it can be common for people going through deconstruction to experience delayed identity development caused by an inability to safely explore their sexual or gender identity until later in life. Internalized homophobia or transphobia may also need to be worked through in order to build self-acceptance.
Redefine spirituality on your terms
Sometimes the walls need to fall in order to rebuild a solid foundation. Exploring new spiritual avenues, unlearning harmful beliefs, and building a stronger relationship with yourself are all things that your therapist can help with.
Healing from religious trauma
If you feel like your religious upbringing has harmed you or is keeping you from moving forward in life, it may be beneficial to talk about this with a trauma-informed therapist. Whether you choose to engage in talk therapy or EMDR, your therapist can help you overcome chronic guilt around sexuality, reframe frightening beliefs around sin and morality, and process experiences of manipulation or abuse in religious settings. Religious or spiritual abuse can and does happen in any religion, and it’s not something that only people who have been involved in organized religion experience.
Although deconstructing your faith can at first feel like losing everything, therapy can instead help this process be about gaining clarity, self-trust, and liberation.
If you’re ready to begin healing from religious trauma or want support re-examining your beliefs, Nurtured Nature Counseling can help. Reach out today to schedule a free consultation.
