What is Faith Deconstruction and why does it feel like grief?

Where it all begins.

I guess everyone experiences faith deconstruction in different ways - perhaps each person's experience is unique, but they all contain (in one way or another) similar facets.

If you are fortunate to know anyone who has questioned their faith - then maybe you've connected over the same questions and doubts, found a connection in the loneliness and a relief when you realise theres' something so deeply painful about the whole foundation your world has been built on crumbling away.

In it's most clinical sense (!), faith deconstruction is the questioning, doubting, filtering, processing, doubting, questioning, sleepless nights, anxiety inducing moments in your religious space of everything you've known and been taught as doctrine; as truth.

Faith deconstruction is the journey of all that doctrine being put to the test, bent, stretched, overthought, disregarded and fought over.

The First Domino Down

For many it begins with a seed - a single question:

Do I believe that a God of love could send anyone to hell?

Would a God of love really allow all this suffering?

Do I really believe this scripture was 'God-breathed' or even inspired by God?

Was this entire institution just formed on fear and control?

For others it's all around them, it's traumatic and it's very experienced - if you are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, you will have been systemically targeted as a sinner or a problem your whole life and never made to feel your genuine self - in most religious settings anyway.

Perhaps you've volunteered for years and years under the pressure of performing, under the lies of some cosmic exchange for the feeling of being included, accepted and loved. But one day the light switch clicked and you realised that you're burnt out, you've been treated badly and you don't want to live like this anymore.

The Relationship Burden

The only issue is, that even some of these fundamental questions and experiences have formed not only our understanding of ourselves and our lived reality, but commonly are the shared experience of many of those around us who love us and form our closest relationships.

We grew up with these understandings from our parents, our primary caregivers - they were re-established by the priest, pastor, rabbi or imam and cemented by our own human and inate need to be in community with others.

This sense of relational connection is the glue that holds religious institutions together. Everyone wants to feel as though they belong, so they must believe what the others in the tribe also believe. For many this is never questioned - they complete their entire life staying in (as the author and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr calls) 'the child stage'.

On the other hand - deconstruction causes the glue to abrade, and what we're left with is what can be a very heartbreaking friction.

For the majority of those who deconstruct their faith, the silent grief and pain is a very lonely path because there is literally no one they can share this with - or at the very least - no one who would truly understand.

And the reality is that because the foundation of the spiritual, emotional and physical world of the deconstructionist is subsiding, there are usually only a three routes to take:

• turn back around and forget this ever happened

• reconstruct as best as possible (with many years, battles and headaches ahead)

• leave the whole thing behind: the religious institution, the relationships and all

All of these mean the very real fear of losing those most precious around them - including parents, children, spouses or partners and friends.

The Bodily Cost and Nervous System Response

Any three of these ways forward come at an incredible cost - not only relationally, but psychologically and therefore physiologically. I believe our bodies keep tabs of all our emotional experiences (especially ones that put us in fight/flight/freeze/fawn) - for many in the field of mental health and psychology - we call this tab: trauma.

The cost you may have already begun to experience may show itself in sleepless nights, worrying, panic - panic attacks, general to very acute anxiety - at the very least you may question what the future looks like, especially I imagine, how will your relationships be salvaged through this very wild journey.

Your body, will I'm sure, be already telling you in these ways (or others) how it is feeling about this uprooting. Nightmares, flashbacks, dissociation, repeating dreams, catastrophising can all be ways in which we begin to cope with the trauma inflicted on our bodies from our spiritual, emotional and relational structures being pulled apart.

We'll end there today, but I hope this connects in some way with your experience.

Your Unique Experience

As I mentioned at the start, you will have a unique experience of this journey. It will be different to mine in ways and similar in some.

It can be filled with very bleak days with dark clouds and big questions, but there is also a huge amount of hope - you have liberated yourself from a way of being that is not authentically you, but only what years of external voices and validation created.

It is time for rebuilding - whether that's in or out of your religious expression.

And the beauty of rebuilding means that you can take all that you've learnt from the process into a more genuine place of living.

Of course this may be so far from your current reality, and you may really need someone to talk to and help you today. That person you may already know, but if you don't and would like to talk to a qualified therapist, then I would love for you to reach out and see if we might connect.

Thinking of you on your journey as I know the grief can be so overwhelming and the journey so solitary.

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