• Are you deconstructing your beliefs or faith system?

• Have you experienced guilt, shame, or hurt by members of your faith community?

• Are you questioning where is God (or a higher power) in the midst of your struggles?

• Do you want to maintain a personal faith but struggle to align with your faith community’s actions?

The Problem

Faith systems give us a framework for discerning “good vs bad,” “right vs wrong.” They give us an understanding of purpose, suffering, and growth. They also create community to live out these values together.

Unfortunately, faith communities can also create power dynamics that promote narcissism, legalism, control, and abuse. As a member, the place you go to for safety & belonging may have left you experiencing immense feelings of guilt, shame, being used, or not being good enough. You may wrestle with the thought that everything you grew up believing was a lie. You may feel left out or that grace doesn’t apply to you.

Along with other aspects of human development, faith development is a normal part of life. It has been studied and tends to unfold in these stages:

• During your upbringing

  • You inherit stories & virtues of what to believe and practices for how to live them out

• During late adolescence or adulthood

  • You begin to recognize ways that these values do not align with you

  • You identify ways you have been hurt by, disappointed by, or don’t agree with aspects of your faith community

• Deconstruction

  • You start to doubt, wrestle with hard questions

  • You experience disillusionment or dissonance

  • You pull away from formal gatherings or spiritual communities

The Path Forward

It can be easy to get lost in despair during the deconstruction phase. However, one additional stage following deconstruction entails reconstruction, where you “put the pieces back together.” During this phase, you can:

• Identify & prioritize the core tenets of your faith, beliefs, or values

• Process and make new meaning of your faith experiences

• Partake in rituals & community (or not) in a new, authentic manner

In therapy, you are allowed to wrestle with doubt, disillusionment, and disappointment. Some questions are about doctrine. Others may be about your very self. It’s okay to not have answers. Together, we can process the hard questions and heavy emotions that arise.

From there, you can explore what elements of your faith experience & understanding you want to keep (or get rid of) going forward. We identify what values matter most to you and how you want to live them out. While the faith journey often points to where you are going, it is perhaps moreso important to consider who you want to be and become along the way.

The existence of faith acknowledges the presence of mystery. Part of any faith — even if it’s only faith in yourself — is learning to step into the unknown. This may entail leaning into your core beliefs & values to make a hard decision; it may entail stepping out of hurtful environments, even if you don’t know how others will respond. Regardless, you can learn to take these steps in the midst of uncertainty and in a way that is congruent with how you want to live.