Deconstructing Faith: Therapy for Religious Trauma, Grief, & Rebuilding
Therapy for Religious Trauma in Colorado Springs
A lot of the people who reach out to me for therapy ask the same question in our consult call:
What are your faith beliefs, and how do they get incorporated into therapy?
Sometimes people are asking this because their faith is really important to them. It’s a cornerstone of how they live their lives, and they want to know that I understand, that I speak that language.
Other times, people are asking because they’ve been wounded by their faith. They’ve had experiences that have created friction… experiences that have led them to question, to deconstruct, to feel confused… and sometimes even left them angry at what they were taught, especially when it feels disconnected from the reality of what they’ve lived through.
And in those cases, they’re also asking the same question for the same reason: They want to know that I speak the language. That I understand where they’re coming from, what they’ve experienced, and the pain that it’s caused. That I can hold space for the wrestling - without trying to force an outcome.
In both cases, people want to know that I understand - and in both cases, what I can tell them is that I do.
I grew up in Christian evangelical culture. I’m very familiar with the language. And I’m also very familiar with the tension that can come from having a faith that has been deeply important to you, while also not knowing how to reconcile parts of it with your own lived experience.
That’s something I’ve had to wrestle through in a deep and personal way myself.
So I get both sides. I understand what it’s like for your faith to feel central to everything in your life. And I understand what it’s like to have experiences, within the church or religious culture, that cause you to question what you’ve been taught.
Deconstruction can feel like such a fragile and complex place to be
There’s an inner conflict that often sounds like this: This has shaped my entire life. I don’t know who I am without it… but I also can’t fully accept what I was taught.
People in this space want to know that they’ll be met with care. That the complexity will be understood. That both sides of their experience can be held at the same time - the experience of growing an identity in that culture, and the experience of having to pull it apart and decide what to do moving forward.
There are two things that almost always show up in the process of deconstructing
The first is grief.
When something has been central to your life - when it has shaped your identity, your relationships, your sense of meaning - and you begin to separate from it, that’s a loss. In many ways, it can feel like a death. A death of what once organized your life… and sometimes even a death of the version of yourself that lived within it.
And anytime there’s loss, there’s grief.
The second piece that often shows up is trauma.
People are often deconstructing because they’ve been hurt. And there’s no denying that harm has happened within the church. Some of what people have experienced or witnessed can be incredibly difficult to reconcile.
For many, that pain is what initiated the deconstruction in the first place. And in some cases, it’s also what has created distance in their relationship with God.
This is where therapy can be incredibly meaningful
We’re able to address the grief and trauma, we’re able to work through all the feelings in a way that begins to lift the fog.
And as that happens, there’s often more clarity about how to move forward - less inner conflict, and more freedom to decide what faith looks like for you now.
Either way, therapy is a place to be messy. This is messy, complex, and deeply nuanced work. There are so many layers to it.
And together, we can unpack that messiness, sit in the tension of it, and begin to move forward - without judgment, without expectation, and without any pressure to reconnect to something you’re not ready for.
