Welcome back, everybody, to Religion on the Mind, and more specifically to this mini-series we are calling

Anxious Times. I'm Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist, and psychology of religion researcher,

and I'll be joined in these episodes by a longtime friend of the pod and collaborator,

Kristen Tiedman. For each Anxious Times episode, we're going to be highlighting one or more specific

concepts from existential psychology and practically applying them to living through unsettling

periods like the present moment.

This first set will include five or six episodes, and we plan to return

for more later on, possibly in the fall. Let's dive in.

So this is the first installment of an ongoing series, and the main goal of these episodes

is to take specific ideas from the worlds of existential psychology, maybe sometimes

existentialism as a philosophy, that have practical application to human beings living through periods of high anxiety,

which we're calling anxious times.

And when we say anxious times, we are referring to multiple scenarios.

The first and most obvious probably is sociopolitics, which in recent U.S. history seems to be ratcheting up in terms of

overall anxiety, I'd say especially since 2016 Trump's first term. But of course, the United States

has gone through periods of high anxiety in the past, the Civil War, the World Wars, Vietnam War,

civil rights movement, recession of the 70s, you know,

you can name them.

Most of my therapy and coaching clients deal with issues related to religious change.

And when they come to work with me, they are also generally living through a more private,

anxious time when old paradigms aren't working, relationships might be

strained, meaning and direction are generally less clear than before that religious change.

...