Sometimes people want to go from pissed to blissed in 3 seconds. Or they think others should. While we might strive to balance our emotions and stay in control of our behaviors, feeling and processing the emotion of pissed (or any emotion) needs its time. Giving it some attention actually helps deepen our awareness, thus widening our spiritual capacity.
But sometimes we avoid feelings. Is that ever good?
This blog article shares some basic concepts, then addresses:
When is using spiritual thoughts and practices a helpful strategy to delay addressing or lessen difficult emotions?
What about Divine healing?
Spiritual Bypassing = "The use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds and developmental needs." (John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening)
Spiritual Support = 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. (Shannon’s definition)
In the previous blog, Part I, we looked at some basic examples of Spiritual Bypassing in response to anger, trauma, and difficult circumstances, and what affirming, integrating spiritual support would look like instead.
This time we'll look at Spiritual Bypassing: when spirituality disconnects us from what really matters (Robert Augustus Masters, 2010) concepts in bold below, with my comments and examples beneath them.
Spiritual bypassing can include the following:
Exaggerated detachment
Example: Not caring at all. Instead, real spirituality includes caring about and for others, while not letting that subsume you.
Overdone niceness vs. emotional depth and authenticity
Example: I’m not telling her I’m mad at her because I want to “be nice” and appear nice because that’s the spiritual way. This is different from an assessment such as: Her mother just died and she doesn’t have the capacity to hear me and process my feelings about the interaction, so I may briefly let her know I feel unhappy about it, but talk with my therapist about it in depth.
Blind or overtly tolerant compassion
Overemphasis on the positive
We actually do need to overemphasize the positive to combat the brain’s negativity bias, and yet there needs to be room for expressing the negative. I aim for 20 minutes a day max on negative if possible, or up to 60 for those long conversations with my partner about difficulties we want to resolve. What’s a reasonable amount to time for you to process the negative?
Or, is it less about the amount of time and more about content- are we processing or ruminating? Are we spiraling out of the negativity and into understanding, or spiraling downward into more blame, shame, hatred, etc.?
Anger-phobia (confusing anger with aggression and ill will)
Some colloquial ways of speaking aren’t very clear. “He got really angry with me” could mean he was yelling or raging. “We got in a fight” could mean we got in a verbal argument or physical altercation. If a spirituality teaches that we shouldn’t feel angry, then we’d be repressing and bypassing our feelings. If it teaches that we should express our anger in healthy ways (voicing but not raging, threatening, or physically abusing someone), then it’s supportive.
I think there’s also sexism to watch out for here. For example, some Christian streams allow men to express anger any way they want, but not women, and that’s problematic.
For example, I have a sacred listening client who grew up Baptist, and if she didn’t want to help in the kitchen, she’d be called a “bitch.” If she expressed disagreement, she’d be “so much trouble,” but the men in her family could do whatever they want.
Emotional numbing and repression
Weak or too porous boundaries
I experience this frequently with some people who ascribe to spiritualities that use the idea of Oneness and freedom to mean we can all do whatever we want and if other people are upset, it’s their problem. While we don’t “cause” other people’s feelings, we do contribute to their experiences with how we act and treat them. In human communities, people thrive when there are some shared agreements and follow through on expectations.
Lopsided development e.g. Cognitive intelligence too far ahead of emotional and moral intelligence
Example: Buddhist Zen teachers who are clear in teaching the path, but commit inappropriate and hurtful sexual affairs. Perhaps they have ignored aspects of needed psychological healing, or perhaps they allowed themselves to believe their spirituality put them “beyond” the typical boundary needs.
Debilitating judgement about one’s shadow side
A high amount of perfectionism can leave us overly critical about the areas we fall short in. Wanting to be highly spiritually developed -right now- can contribute to us loathing our struggles. Inability to accept our struggles can lead to denial and this next point:
Delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being
Devaluing of the personal relative to the spiritual
Example: Not treating your spouse with kindness and love, but preaching it on Sunday morning. I’m guilty of this! Marriages are hard. And yet we need to strive to act in our daily lives with the values we aspire to.
So, if avoiding working with real feelings like anger, sadness, etc. or avoiding our personal shortfalls or struggles with others is bypassing, then...
1. Is it ever okay to use spiritual thoughts and practices as a strategy to delay addressing or lessen difficult emotions?
Delaying:
Sometimes it is helpful to wait to go into deeply negative feelings until you have the support of someone else who is grounded, or until you have greater personal ability to transform or release those feelings. If the purpose of allowing negative feelings to be expressed is to let them be truly felt, and then release them or allow them to transform, and if someone is in such a difficult mindset that going into negative feelings would get them stuck there, then it could be helpful to use spiritual practice or ideas to cope with (temporarily avoid or delay) very difficult states or feelings until someone has the support they need to let out the difficult feelings. This is like a temporary bypass, with the intention of coming back to those feelings.
***For example, I see other coping strategies in my clients that are used to shift away from deeply negative strategies because they don’t want to get mired in depression. So when an awful event happens or super negative thinking starts, in order to avoid suicidal ideation, they go for a walk outside and repeat their spiritual affirmations, ex. “The earth is supporting me; I am loved.” Then in session with me, we might explore a little bit of those super negative thoughts and feelings and their origin, trying to release and transform them.
Spiritual bypassing can be a strategy used by us like other strategies to mitigate intense feelings. Other strategies include: cut-off or ghosting (not talking or relating with someone), substance use, intense exercise, etc. Spiritual bypassing may be a healthier choice than some other strategies if you compare both the positive and negative side effects. However, it may not ultimately help the person resolve their underlying intense feelings and lead to less psycho-emotional development, growth, and stability. Therefore, spiritual bypassing might be best used while figuring out how to safely address what needs to be addressed.
Lessening:
It’s okay to lessen negative feelings. Don’t we all want to experience more equanimity in life? We just can’t erase all negative feelings by denying them. If we stuff down our negative emotions too long, they fester. They risk growing and coming out in unintentionally or even in subconscious ways. For example, snapping at one’s children due to work stress. Another example would be physical ailments caused by stress.
But we can focus on the bigger Universal picture and the base of divine love helpful to lessen overwhelming emotions. Common strategies can put our feelings in perspective and soften the intensity or overwhelm of challenging experience. These common self-care strategies include: counting to 10 with deep breaths, going for a walk, taking a bath or shower, praying, doing yoga stretches, visiting a meaningful place. They help us feel better and not become overtaken by the bad. But we still honor the truth of the bad.
I think about a practice of Toggling. Toggling is going back and forth between two things. In the cognitive sense, it’s between emotional states. Spending some time in grief over past lost, then shifting awareness to the present moment and allowing delight. Spending some time in anger over past experience, then shifting to present calm. Spending some time in anxiety about what might happen, then shifting to present to find relaxation. How do you know when it’s time to shift? If you find yourself looping (repeating) thoughts, and it’s agitating you more than helping express it, it may be time.
Daily meditation is a general practice to lessen mental looping that drives us deep into despair, and it’s not bypassing when the intention and context is to lessen rather than completely avoid feeling something. In contrast, bypassing would be doing a bliss meditation right after starting to feel angry or sad about a specific event to avoid the feeling and never giving space for it to arise.
What about Divine healing?
Divine healing can come through intention, petition, hard work, grace, or gift. It’s when we feel that something greater beyond our own control or efforts bestows upon us a sense of wholeness, belonging, acceptance, resourcing or empowering. As long as we take our healed heart or mindset back into relationship with others, it’s not spiritual bypassing. For example, if we cry to God for help because we hurt someone, and in our cry we feel God has forgiven us, we still need to seek forgiveness from the human and not just declare that we are forgiven.
If we have an experience of divine healing but still treat others in our lives with bitterness, it would be spiritual bypassing to believe we have achieved a better state and don’t need to do anything else.
If we experience divine healing and then think we are far superior to others, we are bypassing the truth of interbeing.
If we think we don’t have any shadow left or have arrived at a higher level of being and thus devalue the personal realm relative to the spiritual realm, we are bypassing the reality of human relationship, coexistence, and interdependence.
Desire to be more spiritually advanced (or an attachment to being fully healed by a divine power) and less “human” can lead to self-recrimination or denial.
So seeking divine healing may be best when we remain committed to honest awareness of our inner nature and intergenerational belonging. Divine healing can be a sensation of the mystery of healing through spiritual exercise or more scientific steps. Many of them overlap.
***Some clients come to me with high anxiety or long-time depression, and they’ve already talked with therapists and doctors, tried medications and such. Spiritual practices such as EFT tapping or alternate nostril breathing help restore their nervous systems to the equanimity and joy that the Divine would want for them. I don’t think Spirit wants people in depression or anxiety.
And spiritual practices can BE a way of processing and healing. EMDR and trauma-informed care proponents say that when we address the current symptoms manifesting in the nervous system (the present state, triggered by past traumatic events), we are also actually healing the past, because trauma is the past still living in the present. So, using God or Spirit’s love to heal now may be indirectly addressing the wounds from the past. Alcoholics Anonymous has step about giving one’s life to God, as a way of addressing the previous difficulties of using alcohol (while still having as a step to make amends whenever possible with humans who have been hurt), and moving forward differently.
So much more could be explored about how holistic and integrative each spiritual practice or exercise is or is not. If you wonder what is most helpful for you, I'd love to companion you in the exploration.
🌷 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"
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