Spiritual bypass

So I hope that gives you some insight, especially when you run into the everything's great narcissist and they're saying everything's great just as they're spreading toxicity and lack of empathy and all the other gaslighting, invalidating, dismissive things they do, but somehow they're able to put a nice shine on it and say everything's great just as they're sticking it to you.

So let's talk about spiritual bypassing.

Now, you may not know the term, but spiritual bypassing is actually a term that was, I think, coined in the 70s or 80s by a guy named John Wellwood.

And it's this idea of using spiritual beliefs or practices as a way to circumvent real feelings or processing real pain.

There is a real arrogance to spiritual bypassing, as though the bypasser can't be bothered with mere human feelings, but instead they hide behind spiritual explanations.

Now listen, I am the first to acknowledge that psychological pain is a beast and it would be nice to run away from it.

And I know my clients always want to run away from it many times, but that's not how it works.

Now this is a channel about narcissism, so why am I talking about this? As you can imagine, narcissistic folks would love to take shortcuts on psychological pain.

Um, this has been incredibly insightful, I would say.

And one more thing I want us to touch on, right, is, uh, spiritual bypassing, right? So you mentioned avoiding spiritual bypassing.

So what does that mean, and why is it important?

Spiritual bypassing.

Yeah.

So a lot of spirituality, a lot of people think spirituality is just this very elusive, you can only do it in a mountain in Tibet, um, [chuckles] and do it if you are completely renouncing yourself of material things, and you're done with that.

[chuckles] I still practice, you know, the, the Christian values, but I'm not completely shut off to the rest of spirituality or other religions or other perspectives.

If it's going to benefit me and benefit my family and their nervous systems, then I am open to what it could do and the possibility.

I think...

I mean, what we're reading here could be evangelicals or any cult, right? Or it sounds like they've been in a low information environment where it also, Temple used the phrase spiritual bypassing, which is really critical for everyone, which for those who don't know, is using spirituality or religion to avoid your problems.

It's the straight up.

It's like, oh, yeah, I don't need to worry about saving because I'm going to get raptured.

So, yeah.

I guess we don't have any indication about where this occurred, somewhere in the U.S.?

Somewhere in the U.S., but the reason why I chose it was because of the spiritual bypassing part, and I think the harmful effects that this had on the person posting, that's what I really wanted to highlight, because when we are talking about religion, There is a personal aspect to it, but then there's also an interpersonal, like, relationship aspect to it.

And I think a lot of times what people miss is how hurtful some of these beliefs, what some of these beliefs can lead to and how much harm they can cause, not just as we'll find out, like, emotionally and abusive-wise, like, but also, like, end of life, right? Like, religion specifically has these truth claims that they can't make, but they do make, and they make it as if it were a fact.

Mm-hmm.

A real danger is using energy work to avoid confronting and resolve psychological wounds, so-called spiritual bypassing.

How can you tell the difference between genuine transcendence and mean avoidance in the healing context?

Pain is usually a pretty good indicator.

really good question.

I mean...

We might call this a spiritual bypassing process where it's like I have all this pain and I'm just going to transcend it.

And I'm really good at disconnecting and floating into some different energetic realm.

And I'm just going to stay there because I feel really blissed out there versus deal with the nitty gritty of my life.