Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual practice can be a real source of peace, meaning and growth. But it can also be used, often without us realising, as a way to avoid things that hurt.
So, what is spiritual bypassing? It's the name for this pattern, and it's worth understanding, especially if you've been on a spiritual path for a while and sometimes wonder why certain patterns haven't changed.
What is spiritual bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing means using spiritual beliefs, practices or language to avoid painful emotions, unresolved wounds and the developmental work of becoming a whole person. The term was coined by the psychologist John Welwood in the 1980s, after he noticed it in himself and in the spiritual communities he was part of.
The key word is "avoid". Spiritual practice isn't the problem. The problem arises when it becomes a way of getting around something we'd rather not feel, not a way of meeting it.
Why it's easy to miss
Spiritual bypassing rarely looks like avoidance. It can look like growth, calm or wisdom, which is exactly why it can go unnoticed for years. And it isn't a sign that someone is insincere. Most people who bypass are doing their best with the tools they have.
Signs of spiritual bypassing
Everyone does some of these some of the time. They become a pattern when they're how we handle most difficult things.
Positivity that skips the pain
Saying "everything happens for a reason" or "just stay positive" before you've allowed yourself to feel what's happening. Hard feelings get treated as failures, or as a sign you're "not vibrating high enough".
Detachment mistaken for peace
Feeling calm because you've cut off from feeling, not because you've worked through it. Genuine peace tends to include sensitivity. Numbness doesn't.
Using "it's all ego" to dodge responsibility
Describing anger, hurt or a legitimate need as "just ego" so you don't have to deal with it, or dismissing another person's pain as their illusion. Insight into the ego is valuable, but used this way it becomes a way of not listening.
Avoiding conflict and boundaries
Treating anger as unspiritual, so you can't say no, express a need or challenge someone. Being "loving" by suppressing what you actually feel.
Staying in the head or in the highs
Collecting spiritual ideas, retreats and experiences, while ordinary life, relationships and old emotional patterns stay largely as they were.
If you recognise some of these, it's not a reason for shame. It's information.
Why does spiritual bypassing happen?
Often, it's because there was something painful to avoid in the first place. Many of us learned early on that certain feelings weren't welcome, and developed protective strategies to cope. In parts-based work these might be seen as protective parts of us, doing their best to keep a wounded part, often a wounded inner child, from being overwhelmed.
Spiritual practice can slot neatly into that job. A part that learned to stay calm, stay positive or stay "above it all" can use spiritual ideas as an especially respectable way to do it.
There's also the cultural side. Some spiritual communities, and a lot of online spirituality, quietly reward positivity and detachment, which makes bypassing easy to slip into and hard to spot.
I should say that this is my reading as a practitioner. Spiritual bypassing is a useful concept from clinical psychology and spiritual teaching, not a formal diagnosis, and there is limited research on it, so I'd hold any one explanation lightly.
How to practise without bypassing
The aim isn't to drop your practice. It's to let it include your humanity.
- Let feelings be felt first. Meditation and awareness can help you stay with a difficult feeling, rather than rise above it.
- Include the body. Emotions live in the body as well as the mind, and noticing sensation can bring you back from abstraction. Somatic approaches do exactly this.
- Get curious about your protective parts. Ask what the calm or positive voice is protecting you from. My post on false beliefs explores how some of these beliefs formed.
- Keep your ordinary life in view. Relationships, work and boundaries are part of the path, not a distraction from it.
- Work with someone you trust. A grounded teacher, therapist or mentor can see what we can't see in ourselves.
This is also why many people find that psychological and spiritual work belong together. Transpersonal approaches are built on that idea, and my guide to blocks to spiritual awakening looks at what tends to get in the way.
A grounded way forward
Understanding what spiritual bypassing is isn't a reason to give up on spiritual practice. It's an invitation to let it go deeper, so it can meet the parts of you that are still hurting, as well as the parts that feel at peace.
If you're on a spiritual path and feel that your psychology is getting in the way, I'd be glad to talk it through. You can find out more about spiritual coaching and mentoring, or book a free 30-minute chat through the Work With Me page.
