What is Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing is the act of using spiritual ideologies to ignore, avoid or suppress undesirable feelings or experiences.
For example, if someone loses a loved one and is heavily grieving, spiritual bypassing would be saying something like,
“Everything happens for a reason!” or “You should appreciate that you had them for as long as you did!” without acknowledging the suffering first or ever, by saying something like, “I know this must be really hard” or “I’m sorry that’s happening.”
It does not allow for the feeling or experiencing of emotions and thoughts that are deemed “bad” like anger, sadness or disappointment.
What spiritual bypassing is not:
Reaching for a better thought
Being an optimistic or hopeful person
Attempting to see the silver lining in all things
Accepting ups and downs of life with a sense of chill
Looking for the opportunities in the suffering
With spiritual bypassing, the acknowledgement that life can be unfair, that trauma is hard and that bad things can happen to good people is entirely absent.
Instead, spiritual philosophies are used in avoiding acceptance of what is with a realistic frame of mind. Spiritual bypassing does not give you or others space to accept when things are not okay.
The healthy use of spiritual principles to handle undesirable situations involves allowing yourself and others to process the heavy emotions and thoughts first, and then, moving into a better feeling place.
That said, when looking at things more positively, there are times when spiritual bypassing can be helpful.
Spiritual bypassing can be a handy coping technique for when things are really hard as it can protect a person from experiencing too many painful emotions and thoughts at once.
You can spiritually bypass yourself to get through a painful experience by saying, “Everything happens for a reason, I just may not know it yet.”
Or “The Universe has my back so even if I don’t have the answer now, I might have the answer tomorrow.”
You can use spiritual bypassing on yourself to avoid getting into too negative a headspace, which some see as good.
It can be a way to avoid feeling things that are too painful to process at the moment, so you can save them for when the time is right to feel these things.
Without further ado, let’s dive into spiritual bypassing -
The consequences of spiritual bypassing
If you avoid accepting what is in the long term, you will not be able to change it.
Sometimes unpleasantness must be accepted as a starting point so you have somewhere to start and you’re aware of what you’re striving to move away from.
You must be real, even if optimistically so, about the circumstances as they are in order to shift them in a more desirable direction.
Spiritual bypassing can become toxic when traumatic experiences are not ever acknowledged or accepted, because when this happens, something called soul loss can occur.
Soul loss is an energy imbalance where the soul detaches from the body and it will not return until it feels safe and heard. Soul loss can result in long term feelings of sadness or depression, which ultimately resulted from the original source of pain not being addressed correctly.
Thankfully, there are shamanic practices that can help. For example, soul retrieval rituals can recover elements of the soul that have been lost due to trauma.
How to stop spiritually bypassing yourself and others
If you have the energy for it, allow yourself and other people to vent. Let people complain or suffer loudly near you.
Offer them a tissue, pat their back, verbally acknowledge when something is unfair. Say it out loud - life is unfair!
Essentially, spiritual bypassing, is what some people call it when you glaze over their suffering by not saying "I'm sorry that's happening" or "That sounds really hard, I'm sorry," before using positive spiritual phrases like "Everything happens for a reason!" or "God has a plan for you!"
In essence, it's responding to suffering with a mis-match of energy. When people are suffering they want you to say something only slightly above what they feel, and gently coax them towards the positive.
Ideally, and only if you’re in the mood to put your spiritual counsellor hat on, to avoid spiritually bypassing, read the person’s energy or the room and respond with only a slightly better sentiment than how they currently feel, then guide the energy upward.
For personal venting, I suggest journaling first thing in the morning when your mind is fresh. Acknowledge your feelings on the page and get them out of your mind and body. Simply witnessing your pain on paper, in private, can help you process it.
You don’t necessarily need to be ready with a spiritual answer to all the pain - sometimes the spiritual answer won’t come for years, and it may only be revealed to the person experiencing it, so you may not even need to have that spiritual solution right now.
When spiritual bypassing may not apply
People may accuse you of “spiritual bypassing” them when, in fact, you’re simply being you. If your spiritual tools have worked for you to resolve your pains, it’s okay to continue using them.
You could accidentally spiritually bypass someone without knowing it if they are trauma dumping/venting to you and you say “Let’s get into a positive mindset to find a solution! That’s not the right headspace for a sunny day!”
If someone is in a negative mindset, they may not appreciate that and this comment may be viewed as spiritually bypassing their emotions. Instead, they may want to hear you be negative too.
However, you don’t have to drop your energy or mindset to lower levels to please others, especially if it hasn’t worked for you in the past. You can choose to keep your mindset where it is and let them come to you or not.
When you have found a spiritual or mindfulness practice that works for you, you also may not experience pain or trauma in the ways you have in the past.
You may process difficulties differently than others who have other sets of mental or emotional tools.
If your tools work for you, you don’t have to let others tell you to do or be something else. There may be nothing maladaptive about the way you process the world; you simply may have found your peace.
If someone accuses you of not being supportive of them in a way they like, consider the feedback, but remember, there is a possibility they have expectations of you that are unrealistic.
For example, perhaps they want you to be not you, but instead a person they created of you in their mind, which is a person that has never existed or no longer exists.
If you are showing up authentically as you, you may not need to change yourself to match a fabricated vision of you that only exists in their mind, especially if you are at peace.
The reason you may not need to change how you process things for other people, if your methods work for you, is because there is a chance everyone in your life holds different versions of you in their minds.
Because these versions are infinite and ever-changing, it would be impossible for you to become each one of these imaginary characters to meet everyone’s needs.
So, you can only be yourself. If being yourself results in accusations that you are not meeting someone’s needs - let me be the first to say, I’m sorry, life is unfair. You can’t please everyone.
As a remedy to that, aim to gravitate towards people and circumstances that do find your existence pleasing and desired. You will know who these people and situations are because they will honor you with various forms of reward, praise and support.
All in all, spiritual bypassing is the act of not acknowledging heavy emotions or thoughts that arise from an unpleasant experience.
By not giving these emotions or thoughts space, you may or may not be setting yourself up for more extended or more intense suffering down the road, depending on how you process the situation.
To avoid spiritually bypassing yourself or an issue, when there is a safe space available, give yourself room to feel or express all the emotions and thoughts, then move into using various analytical tools and spiritual principles to overcome the matter.
May all be well in your world,
Amanda
If after reading this article, you’d like more content like this, I encourage you to join The Membership. The Membership is an intuitive and spiritual monthly development program that can help you deepen your connection to your soul’s journey.
It includes exclusive guided meditations, articles and resources that can help you be a better spiritual ally to yourself and others, while honoring the person you are today. You can begin your journey with a 14-day free trial, no credit card info required.
