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.