Are You Using Spiritual Bypassing to Make Excuses for Yourself?
As an important note: I wrote this before events in Ukraine unravelled last week; little did I know how much more turbulence the world would be encountering. The lightness we've all been hoping for seems a bit further off than anticipated now and there is so much more at stake. This is why I think this subject is still as relevant as ever.
Hard to believe we are already into March! February felt like the longest month ever, but now that it’s done, it feels rather like a blur. Living in Ottawa has certainly not been boring with the occupation that I’m sure you’ve at least heard about.
I personally find that while February is the shortest month of the year, it tends to feel like the longest as I yearn for the promise of warmer spring days and glimpses of green as the snow melts.
The world as a whole seems to be wrestling its way out of the collective chrysalis we’ve been growing within. In a dragonfly's lifespan, the final stage of emergence is to sit in shallow water, near the margins, for several days, getting ready for the final moult and starting to breathe air. After finding a secure support, they redistribute their body fluids, pushing the thorax, head, legs and wings out of the chrysalis. There is then a pause of about 30 minutes to allow their legs to harden enough for the next stage when the abdomen is withdrawn. The wings, and then the abdomen, are expanded and start to harden.
It feels to me as though we’re in that space between emergence and the hardening/armouring of vulnerable parts. This is a time that calls for acknowledgement of what is vulnerable so you can identify within yourself what truly needs protection and what you are simply trying to hide. In that spirit, I’ve chosen to make this week’s theme spiritual bypassing. It shows up so much in my line of work when people have been navigating the spiritual community that glosses over so much shadow work and espouses the McDonald’s version of spirituality as all light and love and no negative vibes.
The term Spiritual Bypassing was coined by prominent psychotherapist, John Welwood and defined it as using “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.” The goal of such practices, he claimed, was enlightenment. During times when there is a great deal of unrest and uncertainty in our internal and external worlds, spiritual bypassing becomes more prominent; its foundation is avoidance and repression; and for some individuals, spirituality serves as a way to rise above or handle the shaky ground beneath.
Signs of Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing prevents people from acknowledging what they are feeling and distances them from both themselves and others. Some examples of spiritual bypassing include:
Avoiding feelings of anger
Believing in your own spiritual superiority as a way to hide from insecurities
Believing that traumatic events must serve as “learning experiences” or that there is a silver lining behind every negative experience
Believing that spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer are always positive
Extremely high, often unattainable, idealism
Feelings of detachment
Focusing only on spirituality and ignoring the present
Only focusing on the positive or being overly optimistic
Projecting your own negative feelings onto others
Pretending that things are fine when they are clearly not
Thinking that people can overcome their problems through positive thinking
Thinking that you must “rise above” your emotions
Using defence mechanisms such as denial and repression
It is essentially a way of gaslighting yourself to feel better in the short term and lets the real issues fester until they become too big to ignore.
You might be spiritual bypassing if you say things like this to people experiencing challenges:
Everything happens for a reason
You create your own happiness
It was for the best
It was a blessing in disguise
Good vibes only!
Thoughts and prayers!
Before resorting to platitudes, ask yourself who the comment is really helping. Is it really giving someone comfort or insight, or is it just a way of dismissing a difficult situation so that you can feel better?
What Causes Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing is a form of defence mechanism to protect us from things that seem too painful to deal with, but not without a cost. Ignoring or avoiding the issue allows it to fester and the problem becomes more difficult to solve later on.
The rise of Wellness culture has perpetuated toxic positivity and permanent optimism and can be a driving force behind spiritual bypassing. It teaches people that they cannot be well or healthy unless they are able to rise above any negativity. The problem with this is that negative emotions are part of a normal human experience and are usually a sign that something in your life needs to change. Ignoring these signs can lead to worse problems down the road.
Long Term Effects
Spiritual bypassing isn't always negative; in times of severe challenges and trauma, it can be a way to temporarily cope. However, research suggests that it can be damaging when used as a long-term strategy to suppress problems.
Spiritual bypassing can have a number of negative effects, including an impact on individual well-being as well as relationships with others. Some of the potential negative consequences include:
Anxiety
Blind allegiance to leaders
Codependency
Control problems
Disregard for personal responsibility
Emotional confusion
Excessive tolerance of unacceptable or inappropriate behaviour
Feelings of shame
Spiritual narcissism
A Way to Ignore Difficult Emotions
You may turn to spiritual bypassing when you think you should not be feeling what you are feeling. Negative emotions can be overwhelming at times. Feelings of anger, jealousy, disgust, annoyance, and rage can be distressing, and you may find yourself feeling shame or guilt for feeling or thinking such things. Rather than face these murky emotions and the fallout that can accompany them, spiritual bypassing becomes a tool for avoidance.
It should also be noted that being in a pattern of spiritual bypassing can increase your desire to save other people from emotions or situations that make YOU uncomfortable. Trying to save or shield others from their circumstances or poor choices can also become its own form of spiritual bypassing.
Dismissing Others’ Experiences
Spiritual bypassing can also be a tool to dismiss what others are feeling, used as a tool to gaslight others into staying silent about things that have harmed them.
Rather than having the opportunity to express their pain, people who have been harmed are told by others that they are being a negative person. This tendency uses spirituality to manipulate and reframe experiences in a way that lets people off the hook for the harm they may have caused and redirects responsibility onto the harmed. If you believe yourself to be a good person, you might struggle to take responsibility for hurtful things that you have done. Admitting that you have harmed someone else through your actions not only causes feelings of guilt, it also conflicts with your desire to see yourself in a positive light. In this way, spiritual bypassing becomes a way to shift the blame back onto the other person while absolving yourself of any responsibility and therefore resolves the cognitive dissonance that can take place in that discomfort of conflicting beliefs.
Victim Blaming
Another example is using “spiritual” actions to justify NOT taking action. Examples of this include saying things like:
It's that way for a reason
It's as nature/God intended
It is what it is
This lets people off the hook from taking any responsibility, because according to such explanations, these things are natural, unchangeable, or divinely caused.
Such explanations make it easy to just accept things as they are and not focus on the steps that we can take to make a difference. While true that some situations are outside of our control and we face obstacles that make change difficult, it is important to acknowledge and identify what we CAN do to improve our lives.
It is a form of victim-blaming, especially in cases where people are experiencing the negative effects of various kinds of trauma and aren’t healing in some unspoken timeframe. Believing that people should just stop being negative in order to avoid exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and other physical and psychological manifestations of stress is akin to telling them that they are to blame for their own pain and suffering.
While what I’ve shared about spiritual bypassing today shows how it makes it difficult to acknowledge valid feelings, I fully believe that spirituality itself (however you define it for yourself) can be a positive force in your life. Studies have shown that people who engage in spiritual practices are less prone to depression, cope better with stress, experience better overall health, and have better psychological well-being.
If you find yourself glossing over any of your shadowy parts, that’s when the invitation to pause and ask yourself what’s really going on is being made. What is vulnerable and ready to be witnessed and what truly needs protection?
That’s it for this week!
XO Jessica