What is Spiritual Bypassing—and—How It Can Cause Us to Miss Ourselves and Each Other

A reflection on a (sometimes) misguided way to be there for ourselves and others during this time of deep feeling & what we can do instead

Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 Today we’ve got a potentially charged topic that we’re gonna look at head-on so we can hopefully stay connected to self and others more authentically. She’s long–and I’m super proud of all the words that made her so long.

One thing before we jump in, I show up very much as myself here. Myself first, and all my other labels are secondary. If a therapist speaking candidly feels like too much to your system, that is absolutely is OK and this may not be the best particular newsletter for you.

As is almost always the case, it’s not just the thing that happens that causes the most harm, but what happens after. Watching most of the world respond to the election results has been a BUMMER. So quickly, to avoid sitting in what is for just a moment, everyone launched into how we should (and shouldn’t) feel. How we should (and shouldn’t) react. The urgency to fix running wild. 

I get it. I feel that too, but and acting on urgency isn’t always the most attuned response.

One particular reaction that concerns me, mostly because of how convincing it can be as a “solution” –either for one’s own or someone else’s suffering– is spiritual bypassing.

I was inspired to write about this topic after happening upon a conversation

Naomi Gottlieb-Miller

was having on Substack Notes regarding a response she saw in a yoga teacher community board post-election: a lot of toxic positivity in response to people’s anger and heartbreak. She said,

“But pretending that spreading love and light will solve the very real problems we face in our country is the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing, “lalalalalala” at the top of your lungs. Something my kids do when they don’t want to hear what I have to say.

Love and light are not the answer right now friends.

Cultivating inner peace will not help when it comes to the loss of basic human rights.

You cannot spiritually bypass your way out of authoritarianism.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the term spiritual bypassing, it’s a defense mechanism where “spiritual ideas and practices [are utilized] to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.”¹ 

Spiritual bypassing came blazing back into my psyche due to the post-election onslaught of people telling us how to feel, but this concept’s application goes far and wide beyond this moment in time. It can apply to most emotional suffering you can think of (e.g., experiences with discrimination, harassment, abuse and neglect, grieving with any kind of loss–death, illness, disability, heartbreak, etc.). 

If we can feel pain about it, someone’s likely tried to soar right above it through spiritual practices. 

This isn’t to suggest that spiritual practices cannot and do not bring us the necessary relief we need to function in our lives as they are. They most certainly do. Spirituality can provide immense value in giving us a framework for moving through life. I have many that I personally practice (e.g., yoga, meditation, and even my preferred therapeutic modality, Internal Family Systems (IFS) has a spiritual tilt to it).

However, as the psychotherapist and author in the transpersonal-psychology field, John Welwood who coined the term spiritual bypassing said, “When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.”²

Examples of spiritual bypassing are leaning heavily into beliefs and practices like: