Losing my faith was a gradual process. I had questions and doubts my whole adult life that grew stronger over the years as I became more educated in religion, mythology, ethics, philosophy, and other things. Religious leaders provided insufficient and sometimes quite bizarre answers to my questions. I found many more reasonable, intelligent and enlightening answers at the university. There was no crisis, no death in the family, no death of a friend, no financial problems, etc. that triggered me to hate god and walk away from my faith. It just gradually disappeared. I have had a wonderful family life and marriage for 30 years now. This developed into a family "de-conversion" to atheism triggered by our children's doubts as they entered their teen years and our answers to their incessant questions were as insufficient as the pastors of the church. I can't speak for the other members of my family, but the day I finally let go and admitted that I didn't believe in god and heaven and hell and the devil and all that, it was like a weight was lifted off of me. I have felt stronger, freer and happier than I had in my whole life. I have come to accept the cycle of life, and death as natural and nothing to fear. This is how things are. The nature of things. I am at peace with that. So, my answer is loss of faith does NOT always involve a crisis, and it doesn't always hurt.

Does loss of faith have to be a crisis? Does it have to hurt?

I went through a whole Pascal's dilemma sort of thing, i.e. do I dare to suppose that my religion is fundamentally wrong and risk damnation?

Other than that the whole process was positive and finally rejecting religion very positive.

Frankly being a depressed athiest makes no sense to me (at least regarding the religious aspects of your life). I suspect Virginia Woolf's dad had severe emotional problems and was lashing out.

I really think the answer to this question is that it depends on the temperment and personality involved. Some people seem to need such a "high" purpose to their life that only religion will do, and losing that can really destroy them. For many others, other things like work/art, love, family, politics can take that place and even allow them to thrive.

It doesn't "have" to hurt. It often will, though, because like most such life transitions, it won't be complete -- ie, bits of the old theistic thinking will still be lurking, and thus you'll experience conflict between the opposing worldviews.

Think of Camus' meditation on whether a thinking person should just commit suicide in the face of a meaningless universe. That question is predicated on a couple of conditions: 1)that meaning is, in fact, necessary; and 2)meaning must come from a source external to yourself. That second condition is the classic theistic position, and I think that when people suffer pain from their de-conversion, it's because that idea is still lingering in their heads. Those kinds of underlying believes/assumptions about reality can be devishly hard to overcome.

And there's other stuff, like the conflict that can result with friends and family. The end result, I think, is that it depends on the person, the circumstances, etc, as to how easy that process is.

Does loss of faith have to be a crisis? Does it have to hurt?

Quite the opposite, in my experience. I was a seriously neurotic child, lying awake in bed at night, breaking out in a cold sweat when I thought about heaven going on and on for ever and ever without end. Plus the constant anxiety of imagining a cosmic peeping tom watching everything you do, and preparing to cast you into everlasting infinte torture if you slipped up. It was nothing but a relief when I realized I didn't have to believe in that stuff.