The consequences of spiritual bypassing
If you avoid accepting what is in the long term, you will not be able to change it.
Sometimes unpleasantness must be accepted as a starting point so you have somewhere to start and you’re aware of what you’re striving to move away from.
You must be real, even if optimistically so, about the circumstances as they are in order to shift them in a more desirable direction.
Spiritual bypassing can become toxic when traumatic experiences are not ever acknowledged or accepted, because when this happens, something called soul loss can occur.
Soul loss is an energy imbalance where the soul detaches from the body and it will not return until it feels safe and heard. Soul loss can result in long term feelings of sadness or depression, which ultimately resulted from the original source of pain not being addressed correctly.
Thankfully, there are shamanic practices that can help. For example, soul retrieval rituals can recover elements of the soul that have been lost due to trauma.
How to stop spiritually bypassing yourself and others
If you have the energy for it, allow yourself and other people to vent. Let people complain or suffer loudly near you.
Offer them a tissue, pat their back, verbally acknowledge when something is unfair. Say it out loud – life is unfair!
Essentially, spiritual bypassing, is what some people call it when you glaze over their suffering by not saying “I’m sorry that’s happening” or “That sounds really hard, I’m sorry,” before using positive spiritual phrases like “Everything happens for a reason!” or “God has a plan for you!”
In essence, it’s responding to suffering with a mis-match of energy. When people are suffering they want you to say something only slightly above what they feel, and gently coax them towards the positive.
Ideally, and only if you’re in the mood to put your spiritual counsellor hat on, to avoid spiritually bypassing, read the person’s energy or the room and respond with only a slightly better sentiment than how they currently feel, then guide the energy upward.
For personal venting, I suggest journaling first thing in the morning when your mind is fresh. Acknowledge your feelings on the page and get them out of your mind and body. Simply witnessing your pain on paper, in private, can help you process it.
You don’t necessarily need to be ready with a spiritual answer to all the pain – sometimes the spiritual answer won’t come for years, and it may only be revealed to the person experiencing it, so you may not even need to have that spiritual solution right now.
When spiritual bypassing may not apply
People may accuse you of “spiritual bypassing” them when, in fact, you’re simply being you. If your spiritual tools have worked for you to resolve your pains, it’s okay to continue using them.
You could accidentally spiritually bypass someone without knowing it if they are trauma dumping/venting to you and you say “Let’s get into a positive mindset to find a solution! That’s not the right headspace for a sunny day!”
If someone is in a negative mindset, they may not appreciate that and this comment may be viewed as spiritually bypassing their emotions. Instead, they may want to hear you be negative too.
However, you don’t have to drop your energy or mindset to lower levels to please others, especially if it hasn’t worked for you in the past. You can choose to keep your mindset where it is and let them come to you or not.
When you have found a spiritual or mindfulness practice that works for you, you also may not experience pain or trauma in the ways you have in the past.
You may process difficulties differently than others who have other sets of mental or emotional tools.
If your tools work for you, you don’t have to let others tell you to do or be something else. There may be nothing maladaptive about the way you process the world; you simply may have found your peace.
If someone accuses you of not being supportive of them in a way they like, consider the feedback, but remember, there is a possibility they have expectations of you that are unrealistic.
For example, perhaps they want you to be not you, but instead a person they created of you in their mind, which is a person that has never existed or no longer exists.
If you are showing up authentically as you, you may not need to change yourself to match a fabricated vision of you that only exists in their mind, especially if you are at peace.
The reason you may not need to change how you process things for other people, if your methods work for you, is because there is a chance everyone in your life holds different versions of you in their minds.
Because these versions are infinite and ever-changing, it would be impossible for you to become each one of these imaginary characters to meet everyone’s needs.
So, you can only be yourself. If being yourself results in accusations that you are not meeting someone’s needs – let me be the first to say, I’m sorry, life is unfair. You can’t please everyone.
As a remedy to that, aim to gravitate towards people and circumstances that do find your existence pleasing and desired. You will know who these people and situations are because they will honor you with various forms of reward, praise and support.
