Spiritual Support vs. Spiritual Bypass Part 1

Spiritual Support vs. Spiritual Bypass: Part I

1. What is Spiritual Bypass

2. What is Spiritual Support

3. Specific differences between Bypassing and Support

Part II (next blog)

4. When is using spiritual thoughts and practices a helpful strategy to delay addressing or lessen difficult emotions?

5. What about Divine healing?

6. What about community-actualization instead of self-actualization?

Part I

 Spiritual Bypassing = "The use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds and developmental needs."  -John Welwood

Spiritual Support = The use of spiritual practices and beliefs to find comfort and stability to be able to address difficulties and cope with them or transform them. -Shannon’s definition

A basic introduction to Spiritual Bypassing from the ARTICLE: What Is Spiritual Bypassing? 

“Spiritual bypassing describes a tendency to use spiritual explanations to avoid complex psychological issues.1 The term was first coined during the early 1980s by a transpersonal psychotherapist named John Welwood in his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening. According to Welwood, spiritual bypassing can be defined as a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks."2

“As a therapist and Buddhist teacher, Welwood began to notice that people (including himself) often wielded spirituality as a shield or type of defense mechanism. Rather than working through hard emotions or confronting unresolved issues, people would simply dismiss them with spiritual explanations.“While it can be a way to protect the self from harm or to promote harmony between people, it doesn't actually resolve the issue. Instead, it merely glosses over a problem, leaving it to fester without any true resolution. 

Spiritual bypassing is a way of hiding behind spirituality or spiritual practices. It 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 defense mechanisms such as denial and repression”

  
  

Examples of how I, Shannon, have heard Spiritual Bypassing in conversations:

When you get divorced or dumped, “She wasn’t your soul mate.” "Your perfect match is still out there."

When something painful happens, “It was meant to be.”  “Everything happens for a reason.”

When someone dies and someone is trying to comfort their bereaved, “He’s in a better place.”  “God wanted her for an angel.”  (Fyi, when Lazarus died, Jesus didn’t say this. Jesus wept with the weepers.)

When someone no shows, insults, or ruins something without an apology, "It's no big deal. I'm totally fine."

It's not that these phrases are inherently wrong or bad. They could be “right” or “wrong” in any situation. The issue is when they are used in the face of unacknowledged suffering, they ignore the aspect of reality that is human struggle with life.

I think that Spiritual Support for oneself is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to find comfort and stability to be able to address difficulties in life and cope with them or transform them.

Coming from another person, Spiritual Support can includes compassion, expression of care about the pain, real seeing of where the person is at, acknowledging impacts, honoring needs to emote, allowing shifts when ready, not pushing, sometimes confronting gently out of love and perspective offering, inviting awareness of Divine presence while not presuming God’s view. 

It may not be “safe space” since no one can guarantee what may feel safe, but hopefully it is well-intentioned and well-held space for the wholeness of another person. Acknowledging that someone else can feel cold, or warm, or whatever they feel when they feel it, though you feel differently, is support. In contrast,

"You can’t be or shouldn’t be cold/warm/sad/surprised..." is denial.  

So, if a spiritual practice or idea could help us feel better AND help address the issue, what would that be like?

Exploring examples:

1.  I’m very angry at how meanly someone treated me.

   1. Spiritual idea: Jesus loved sinners (or Spirit loves everyone) and so should we.

   2. Spiritual bypass: I deny or repress my anger and “make myself feel love” toward them.

   3. Spiritual support: I remember that Jesus’ love (Spirit's love) understands that people are sometimes mean because of their own hurt and personal needs, and that all people really do deserve love, including myself who has been hurt by the mean comment. I feel disappointed, sad, mad, and also compassion for myself and the other person. I acknowledge they deserve love, and genuinely ask myself if I am the person to give it, or to instead give respect.

      
      

2. After a traumatic event (example: a natural disaster)

   1. Spiritual idea: Suffering is a part of life.

   2. Bypass: Traumatic events must serve as “learning experiences” or that there is a silver lining behind every negative experience.

   3. Support: Accepting that crap happens and no divine source wants to cause you to suffer. Considering that there could be, but not must be, something to learn or gain from the event.

      
      

3. General perspective/outlook on challenges (example: losing your job)

   1. Spiritual idea: Things can get better.

   2. Bypass: Extremely high, often unattainable, idealism that discounts the actual struggles.

   3. Support: Emotional/mental Hope, visioning a change, active yet paced efforts at progress. It can be positive-focused without discounting the reality of challenges.

      
      

4. Response to difficult emotions (example: grief)

   a. Idea: Emotions are fleeting/passing through and not our true selves.

   b. Bypass: Thinking that you must “rise above” your emotions (not feel, acknowledge, or respond to).

   c. Support: Not turning moments of hurt and pain into longer suffering by dwelling on them; not creating stories that further entrench the hurt and pain; but making an inner acknowledgement of the feeling that is present, observing its sensations in the body, and allowing it to complete its cycle and subside. Becoming present to what’s shifting in the moment.

   
   

5. Difficult circumstance (I bet you could come up with an example!)

   1. Idea: Spirituality can help get through difficulty.

   2. Bypass: Focusing only on spirituality and ignoring the present difficulty.

   3. Support: Engaging spiritual practice to stay grounded or connected, to build a wider net within which to hold the difficult present circumstance. Toggling between focusing on the difficult present circumstance, and retreating to find relief in spirituality.

   
   

  I'll share more about this last point in Part II: 

• Engaging spiritual practice to stay grounded or connected,

• Building a wider net within which to hold the difficult present circumstance.

• Toggling between focusing on the difficult present circumstance and

  retreating to find relief in spirituality.

And I'll explore these questions in the context of Bypass and Support: 

1. Is it okay to use Bypass to delay addressing an issue because you’re not ready, and don’t have the support your need?

2.      When is using spiritual thoughts and practices a helpful strategy to delay addressing or lessen difficult emotions?

3. Can we sometimes be aware of pain and choose not to process it, and go to true spiritual joy instead?

4.      What about Divine healing? Is that bypassing?

5.      What about community-actualization instead of self-actualization?

🌷 I'D LOVE TO INCLUDE ANY OF YOUR QUESTIONS. PLEASE WRITE ME. :)

© Shannon Gorres, 2024. Written by human, not AI or chatGPT. Please contact me to request permission before sharing. I will give you permission to share sections of it when you include "by Shannon Gorres, www.DivineNatureTherapy.com"