Religious Trauma & Worldview Change (#323)

Religion on the Mind

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sara Showalter Van Tongeren is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist (and happens to be the wife of frequent pod guest Darrell Van Tongeren). She joins me to discuss religious trauma, spiritual abuse, and the process of religious belief change — areas where both Sara and I work with clients professionally. Sarah explains that for many, religion answers fundamental existential questions about freedom, identity, isolation, death, and meaning. When religious certainty is shaken, this leaves people without tools to address these questions and creates a crisis of meaning. We discuss the importance of developing "existential resilience" — the ability to navigate uncertainty and both light and dark aspects of existence after leaving religious frameworks. In the Patreon second half, we discuss embodiment in healing religious trauma, rebuilding meaning systems, and how therapeutic relationships can model healthy patterns of rupture and repair lacking in many religious contexts. My instagram: @theexistentialtherapist LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sara-showalter-van-tongeren Group Practice Website: https://www.theflourishingco.org/ My website (no shoes): https://saravantongeren.com/ Therapist Centered Group Consultation: https://www.therapeuticgroupconsultation.com/videos Everett Worthington's work on Forgiveness with free handbook/resources: https://www.evworthington-forgiveness.com/diy-workbooks Highlights: 09:46 The Fluidity of Religious Trauma 14:50 Existential Questions and Religious Beliefs 24:55 Resilience in the Face of Spiritual Abuse 30:11 Coping Mechanisms and Grounding Techniques 43:30 Fighting Back with Cognitive Therapy 50:40 The Importance of Community in Healing ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: www.instagram.com/dancoke/ Or Twitter: twitter.com/DanKoch Faith deconstruction resources: www.soyouredeconstructing.com/ Edited by Josh Gilbert (⁠joshgilbertmedia.com⁠ -- he is accepting more work!) Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: patreon.com/dankoch Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com YHP Patron-only FB group: tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98 Website: www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html Join Dan's email list: www.dankochwords.com/ Artwork by sprungle.co/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back, everybody, to you have permission, the show that aims to take both Christianity
0:08.7	and the modern world of science and culture very seriously.
0:12.7	I am joined today by Sarah Scho Walter Van Tongren, and there's only one place to start here,
0:20.3	Sarah, and that is the subliminal message that you
0:24.1	are sending to me, your clients, and anyone else who stumbles upon your personal website,
0:30.0	your official portrait on your site. It's a great photo, obviously taken by some sort of
0:35.4	professional photographer, beautiful beautiful lighting there you are
0:39.0	you're professionally dressed i see you at your workspace and then i scan down and you're completely
0:45.1	barefoot yes that is me how are you trying to say with that i'm barefoot now dan it's just a portrait It's just a portrait of the clinician. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay, so I've learned
1:00.1	recently, I'm a Scorpio, which is a fire sign. I'm not into this stuff, but it's interesting to me.
1:06.0	Yeah. And I have enough clients that are into it. So I'm learning, Scorpios are not grounded.
1:10.4	They're like fire people.
1:12.2	And so I think it's really interesting that I like being barefoot. And I'm wondering genuinely,
1:16.5	is that because I like to be grounded? I don't know. If you're if you are genuinely wondering
1:22.3	if your personality traits flow directly from the month you were born? I think the answer is probably no.
1:30.2	Yeah. I mean, well, I will say this. It's a helpful communication tool. You know what? You're
1:35.2	already pushing me. Essentially on the enneagram here. We might as well be talking about the
1:41.2	enneagram. Yes, exactly. It can be a very helpful communication tool. That's how I like to think. The science is crap on it. But the communication tool is lovely. And that's what I think about the signs. And now I'm going to get all these emails that are probably people really upset at me. And we just were like, you know, a minute in. Oh, my goodness.
2:01.6	Well, that tells me it's going to be a good conversation that you're willing to give me that much shit right away.
2:08.4	So you are married.
2:11.0	People may have recognized this.
2:12.6	You are married to Darryl Van Tongren.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Religion on the Mind, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Religion on the Mind and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.