Sacred Unraveling

This book shows mental health professionals how to help clients deal with existential uncertainties and find meaning as they grapple with their religious and spiritual beliefs.

As more individuals leave organized religion, deconstruct long-held beliefs, or seek nonreligious spirituality, their existential and spiritual needs often surface in therapy, whether as a presenting concern or a deeper undercurrent. Clients turn to therapists, counselors, social workers, and other helping professionals, desperate for answers. Drawing from cutting-edge research and clinical wisdom, this book provides tools and guidelines for providing culturally competent spiritual care to help clients along their journeys of religious and spiritual change.

The authors introduce their existential distress, growth, and engagement (EDGE) model to help clients make sense of their religious/spiritual identities, develop new worldviews, adjust their morals and values, and cultivate meaningful social connections.

They explore the five existential realities that clients often struggle with when their faith is in crisis. These include freedom (the conflict between autonomy and responsibility); isolation caused by loss of community; identity, which includes lacking a clear narrative of one's life journey; death anxiety; and meaninglessness, both in the grand scheme of things and in one's day-to-day life.

Introduction: An Existential Unsettling

Acknowledgments

Part I. Theoretical and Clinical Foundations

• Chapter 1. An Existential Approach to Religion and Spirituality
• Chapter 2. Four Kinds of Religious Change
• Chapter 3. Existential Distress, Growth, and Engagement: The EDGE Model of Religious Change
• Chapter 4. Diverse Spiritual Care as a Cultural Competency

Part II. Exploring the Existential Chasm

• Chapter 5. The Tension of the Existential Chasm
• Chapter 6. Confronting the Five Existential Realities

Part III. Life After Religious and Spiritual Change

• Chapter 7. The Ripple Effect on Self and Identity
• Chapter 8. Relational Changes and Challenges

References

Index

About the Authors

Sara A. Showalter Van Tongeren, LCSW, is the founder of The Flourishing Collective, a telehealth practice oriented around the therapist-centered group consultation model. She works from a relationally oriented, existential positive psychology framework that is trauma and attachment focused, and she utilizes somatic healing through brainspotting. Sara received the city of Holland's 2020 Social Justice Award for her role in helping pass its first nondiscrimination ordinance. Her book, The Courage to Suffer, introduced an existential positive psychology model of suffering, offering practical guidance for helping clients build meaning amid life's greatest crises.  Follow her work on her websiteopens in new window and over on Instagramopens in new window.

Daryl R. Van Tongeren, PhD, is a psychology professor at Hope College and the director of the Frost Center for Social Science Research. His research focuses on the processes of leaving religion, summarized in his popular book, Done. His work has been covered in The New York Times and The Atlantic. He has won multiple awards and fellowships, including being named a rising star by the Association for Psychological Science and receiving early career awards from APA's Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality and the International Society for the Scientific of Existential Psychology. Follow his work on his website.opens in new window. 

Through wisdom, evidence, practical experience, and wholehearted care, Daryl and Sara offer readers a much needed and timely resource in Sacred Unraveling. The authors masterfully weave their expertise, sensitivity, and humility into the book, while honoring the nuance and complexity of walking alongside clients navigating religious change. Whether you are a mental health practitioner, educator, student, or someone reflecting upon your own spiritual or religious journey, I highly recommend this book.
—Holly K. Oxhandler, PhD, MSW, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, Diana R. Garland School of Social Work, Baylor University, Waco, TX, author, The Soul of the Helper: Seven Stages to Seeing the Sacred Within Yourself So You Can See It in Others

A long-overdue book that bridges the gap between spiritual and existential perspectives in psychotherapy. This very timely, innovative, and illuminating contribution speaks to the growing numbers of people who struggle with the “existential chasm” that arises when they disengage from religious life. Drawing on recent empirical research and clinical wisdom, the Van Tongerens provide valuable perspectives and tools to help clients who are grappling with profound existential concerns—meaninglessness, isolation, freedom, death anxiety, loss of self—as they deal with religious and spiritual change. An important addition to any clinician’s library.
—Kenneth I. Pargament, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH; author, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred, and coauthor, Working With Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice

Therapists who want guidance for the complexities of the current religious and existential landscape will benefit from reading Sacred Unraveling. The authors combine clinical wisdom, scientific research, and authentic understanding to offer a well-grounded model of therapeutic care for clients experiencing changes in religious identities. This is the best book in this growing clinical domain.
—Steven J. Sandage, PhD, LP, Albert and Jessie Danielsen Professor of Psychology of Religion & Theology, Boston University, Boston, MA

Sacred Unraveling thoughtfully addresses this phenomenon, integrating clinical insight with social psychological science in a way that is both rigorous and deeply practical.br/>—David H. Rosmarin, PhD, ABPP, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Director, Spirituality & Mental Health Program, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA

How should a clinician engage a client who is undergoing existential anxiety when the once relied upon resource of traditional religion no longer seems to work? This team, through a skillful blend of psychological science and clinical relevance, provides a convincing answer. Two thumbs up!
—Peter C. Hill, PhD, Rosemead School of Psychology—Emeritus, Biola University, La Mirada, CA

Deeply grounded in empirical research and woven together with clinical wisdom, Sacred Unraveling is an indispensable guide for those seeking to help people navigate the complexities of religious change.
—Julie J. Exline, PhD, Research Director, Division of Perceptual Studies, Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, University of Virginia Health System, Charlottesville, VA