Faith Crisis & Faith Transitions

Faith Crisis/Faith Transition and How Therapy Can Help

Imagine you’re enjoying a summer day floating on your own personal boat, on a river surrounded by people also comfortably relaxing on their boats. And then almost out of nowhere you find your boat is leaking, and fast. It’s disappearing into the water, and comfort suddenly changes to distress.

But this boat never leaked before! And your family and friends have used this boat without any problems! In fact, lots of them are using the exact same kind of boat as you, and they’re blissfully unaware that you’re suddenly floundering to stay afloat while they idly move on. You’re not sure whether to blame a faulty boat or yourself, and you’re consumed with fear, stress, and worry. You feel disoriented by this unexpected inability to count on your boat to be a safe place.

In a similar fashion for those who are experiencing faith crises or faith transitions, these underlying feelings are all too familiar. It’s an experience that people can’t fully comprehend unless they’ve been through it. Even though it can feel isolating, you’re far from alone in this experience, and a skilled therapist can help you through the many complicated challenges and feelings that come with it.

What is a Crisis of Faith or Faith Transition?

Essentially, a faith crisis consists of serious questions about what you believe, combined with the repercussions associated with facing these questions. This experience is highly varied from person to person, so much so that finding a simple set of words that accurately captures it is impossible. These are some of the terms often used to describe the deeply unsettling experience of faith crisis and change.

Faith Crisis
Faith Shift
Loss of Faith
Faith Transition
Deconstruction
Deidentification
Religious Disaffiliation

In our work with these issues, we see different levels of intensity and different responses to the distress that follows, and also varying decisions about how to move forward. The negative impact on mental health can also look quite different from person to person, in some cases becoming quite severe.

A faith crisis or transition can be brought on by re-examining personal values, thinking critically about one’s belief systems, or by encountering things that don’t reconcile with what a religion has taught. Sometimes people are pushed into serious doubts when their church or religious organization endorses things they feel strongly opposed to. Other times faith concerns are caused by personal experiences, or those of people close to them, where personal values and religious values come into conflict. This can frequently occur, for example, when LGBTQ+ individuals are brought up in very socially conservative religions.

How Do Faith Concerns Impact People?

There are many different ways people are impacted. Some feel thrown into a full-blown existential crisis. Questions about life and meaning, previously answered with certainty by their religion, may now need to be faced again and completely re-examined. Trusted foundations can shift as fast as overnight, causing a variety of distressing feelings and sometimes leading to depression and anxiety. For others, faith concerns slowly build over time and the ‘crisis’ is a prolonged period of painful re-examination and realignment.

What’s common among all of these experiences is a disorienting, destabilizing, and emotionally challenging shift. While this shift may ultimately lead to something better, it is rarely a quick or easy shift and in the meantime creates significant amounts of psychological distress.

The effects are not just felt internally. There is also often a significant impact on relationships and all of the different social systems in a person’s life–marriage, romantic partners, family, friends, religious communities, work, school, or neighborhoods.

Some people experience significant, acute distress as a result of complex patterns of traumatic experiences with their faith or religion. This has led experts to coin the term Religious Trauma Syndrome, defined as “the condition experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination.”

How Do People Resolve Faith Crises?

Resolution of a faith crisis is a highly individual experience, and there is no singular “right” answer or response. In fact, that in itself is one of the challenges experienced by people questioning aspects of their faith. There is often no shortage of advice and answers available from the resources and people around them, but these prove shallow and unsatisfying. It is both exhilarating and terrifying for a person to confront the reality that they alone are free to decide what will work best for them and what they choose to believe.

Because of this newfound freedom, there are considerable variations in where people land after their long-held beliefs are pushed into challenge or examination. Some people stay in their faith community and find new ways to orient themselves within their belief system. Some hold on to the aspects of their religious belief that are still working for them and reject those they find problematic. Others become less orthodox and participate more for community or traditions that they still find valuable. And some ultimately decide that what’s best for them is to leave their faith completely, even if at no small cost.

How Therapy Can Help With Faith Crises & Transitions

Most importantly, therapy will not try to tell you what to believe, nor dictate what you decide about the role of faith and religion in your life. Therapy for faith concerns provides a confidential, open, and non-judgmental space, offering those characteristics that can be very difficult to find by those experiencing distress with these issues. From that foundation, therapy will help you explore your faith questions, examine what you believe, connect to your core values, and help you determine what will work best for you as you move forward. Because it is common for those in a state of crisis or transition to experience things like increased anxiety or depressed mood, therapy also serves to address your overall mental health.

You can expect to fully face and explore the existential questions that arise, but in a compassionate and supportive environment. You may be encouraged to be patient as you explore what meaning and purpose you would like to connect to in your life. Therapy can also be particularly useful in teaching you new ways to respond to deeply ingrained thoughts, feelings, and worries that will continue showing up internally even if you no longer need or want them to. Therapy will also help you figure out how to face the interpersonal challenges that arise, such as loss of social networks or community, mixed-faith marriage/partnership, or difficulty in family relationships where beliefs are no longer shared.

Our Full Color Psychology therapists have years of extensive experience helping people with these concerns, and we have navigated our own personal experiences with this area as well. We have particular expertise counseling those from an LDS/Mormon background, and have helped people all along the continuum from those wishing to stay in the LDS faith, to those transitioning into an Ex-Mormon or Post-Mormon identity. We also have the ability to work with those coming from other faiths and religious traditions. If you need help, contact us today.