433 - Avoidance or Enlightenment? Spiritual Bypassing Relationship Problems
Spiritual bypassing 101
The term spiritual bypassing was coined by Buddhist teacher and psychologist John Wellerman in 1984, after he “observed that many people tried to use their spiritual practices to suppress their personal needs and deny their identity. These people read many books on spirituality, engage in spiritual practices, followed spiritual teachers or retreats, and participated faithfully in Church gatherings. All these practices, however good in themselves, distracted them from nurturing their psychological needs as they believed that their spiritual work could one day resolve their psychological problems. Unfortunately, in this context, spiritual bypassing began to take the form of a fascinating pseudo-spiritual therapy, an endless participation in spiritual formation events that didn't really change anything in the participant’s life.” Spiritual bypassing uses spirituality to legitimize and avoid dealing with problems or psychological challenges, such as painful feelings or unhealed wounds.
Spiritual bypassing can happen with any belief system, not just religion. In practice, it can look like:
Throwing scripture or platitudes at yourself or others in order to dismiss the real problem (i.e. “Just pray about it”).
Constantly seeking blissed out states via substance use, meditation, yoga, exercise, sex, kink, etc.
Thinking that if you and your partner share the same spiritual practices or beliefs, that will sustain the relationship.
Avoiding contact or influence from anyone who is considered “unspiritual” or “not spiritual enough.”
Anger-phobia:
Refusing to feel or outwardly display disappointment, aggression, frustration, envy, jealousy, etc.
Refusing to confront others, challenge, or disagree.
Disconnection from all “negative” emotional experience.
Intellectual disassociation.
A dogmatic belief in a charismatic spiritual leader or guru.
Strongly identifying with being an enlightened being or a spiritually superior person.
We spiritually bypass for a lot of reasons, namely to escape from reality or the ordinariness of life, to avoid pain, to cope with problematic social contexts, or to avoid the negative influence of religious communities and leaders.
Why is it bad?
Potential risks of spiritually bypassing your problems include:
Stagnation and passivity: problems perpetuate without really being resolved.
Alienation and disconnect from others around you.
Internalized shame when the chosen spiritual technique fails to fully repress or eliminate negative emotions or experiences.
Addictive draw to behaviors or substances.
High tolerance for inappropriate behaviors from others, high tolerance for being abused or mistreated.
Abandonment of personal responsibility, like feeling disempowered in relationship, or always dodging ownership.
Of course, there are healthy coping mechanisms, but there’s overlap when it comes to figuring out if they’re good or bad, as many of them can be used for both. Some important questions to ask yourself about your coping mechanisms are:
Am I turning away and avoiding versus turning towards and accepting?
Am I denying the reality of my problems versus seeking solutions for problems?
Am I going for short-term benefits versus long-term benefits?
Is there a lack of emotional processing versus emotional processing?
If you’re concerned you might be spiritually bypassing your problems, try some of these tactics:
Get a vibe check from an outside source, like a trusted friend, a therapist, counselor, or coach.
Disconnect for a little while from your practice of choice and track what happens.
Think about integration - do the benefits of your practice of choice carry over into other areas of your life?
Remember to have patience and compassion for yourself.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about spiritually bypassing relationship problems. Even if you do not have a spiritual practice or even if you don't identify as spiritual in any way, all of us have tactics that we use to avoid facing reality and avoid feeling tough emotions when we're in difficult circumstances. In this episode, we're going to talk about why we do this, what spiritual bypassing can look like in real life and how to tell the difference between healthy coping mechanisms and avoidance tactics.
If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show all the time, you should check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book, or wherever fine books are sold. Alternatively, you can check out the first nine episodes of this podcast where we also go over some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.
With that, let's get into it.
Dedeker: Spiritual bypasses. Why are we talking about this? When you hear the term spiritual bypassing, are you familiar with it? Does it bring anything to mind for the two of you?
Emily: It brings you to mind. I'm like, this is a very Dedeker-centric episode.
Dedeker: Oh, there's a reason I wrote this episode, I have some lived experience.
Emily: Yes, I do. I think the concept of the term really came to light just when you were talking about the fact that in certain past relationships of yours that maybe weren't great ones, you tended to sort of zen the anger, zen the challenges away or at least tried to do that, but that, unfortunately, it didn't allow for what you needed, which was to talk about the problems, address the problems more head on. I get that, I get this really strong idea to just maybe if I can change something about myself internally and figure out a way to not care so much or not have something hurt me as much or not feel as triggered by something, then it's all going to be okay.
In reality, I think in relationships, especially it takes two to tango, and we got to address things with the other person, not just with ourselves.
Dedeker: That's the tragedy of all of it is the times in my life I've been the most on top of meditation and doing yoga the most religiously, like every damn day has been when I've been in super shitty relationships, where I didn't necessarily feel empowered to change things. Whether that was a problem with me or I'm like, I feel too scared to ask for what I need or I don't really want to be vulnerable in discussing my feelings or problem with the other person where they're just like an asshole.
Seriously, it'd be asshole where it's like, even if I bring up those things, it's not going to change, but I still feel like I need to be in the relationship and so the only tactic is, I got to get really, really spiritual with it just to get through my day. I think I'm offender number one in my own life that I know of.
Jase: I definitely hadn't heard this term until you first said it to me years ago and I have seen it around since then, but thinking back, it's like, there's definitely been times in my life where I've done that and I see it a lot in a lot of relationship and self-help circles out there. Honestly, even in self-help for moms, for example, or for parents is a lot of risk kind of, rather than-- it's almost like- bear with me on this metaphor here.
It's kind of like when you look at tidying up a home that one approach is, figure out what you need, what you don't like, what sparks joy kind of a Marie Kondo sort of way of approaching it or there's the just find better ways to organize it all so you can cram more stuff into your same amount of space or with scheduling, it's like, rather than fix the fact that you're over-committed and that you hate the stuff you do, it's like, let's try all these different techniques for how you can more efficiently get stuff done so that you can still do all the things you're trying to do.
I tend to fall into that camp very much, which I would say is almost like the scheduling version of the spiritual bypassing. It's like, rather than fix the problem, we find better ways to cope with just having this thing keep going.
Dedeker: That does track because you are often the guy who's like, I'm going to try this new scheduling tactic or I'm going to try this AI assistant or I'm going to try doing time logging. I don't think any of those approaches are bad in and of themselves. I totally get that.
Jase: They're trying to make an unbearable state bearable, rather than actually changing the state itself.
Dedeker: We're going to be discussing that theme a lot in this episode.
Emily: I recall way back when Jase and I were starting to get into the non-monogamous community. I don't know if you've ever attended these parties with us, Dedeker, but we would go to some really, really big parties for people in the polyamorous community, and often it was populated, at least in Los Angeles with a lot of the super hippies, super spiritual, super yoga, vegan, and I'm some of those things. Not to bash anyone.
It felt like there was almost this pull towards non-monogamy and those things as well, which I find interesting. It's like one weirdo intersects with another sort of weirdo and we're all just going to be fun-loving, free-loving hippie weirdos together, maybe, or something. I don't know if you've seen that as well, Dedeker, that there's like, we're all enlightened and therefore free love and, therefore, let's just spiritually bypass or issues away.
Dedeker: We have inherited a wonderful heritage of that, going back to the 60s and 70s, free love movements, where it really was about we're going to literally drop out of society because we've figured out a better way to live, which is, I think, a very natural response and people go through it to recognizing, hey, the systems that we're living under don't really work for a lot of people, but also tying it to that sense of enlightenment, and if we just think all the same way, then we can solve all the problems, or if we just have enough love, we can solve all the problems, which maybe that solve some problems but never solves all of the problems.
Jase: Let's get into the term spiritual bypassing itself, because, maybe, as the listener, maybe you've heard of this before, maybe you haven't, it is a relatively new word or term. It was actually coined in 1984, so not that long ago, as far as words go, at least. The term spiritual bypassing was first coined by psychologist and Buddhist teacher John Welwood in '84 to describe the use of spirituality to legitimize certain behaviors or to avoid dealing with psychological challenges such as painful feelings or unhealed wounds.
Basically, this came about because he would observe a lot of people who were using their spiritual practice to do things like deny their own self-identity or their own personal needs and using that spiritual practice as a replacement for that. That would be like reading books on spirituality, engaging in spiritual practices, going on retreats, following particular teachers very devotedly, participating in every single church gathering they can go to, whatever flavor of spirituality it was for them.
While doing those things isn't inherently bad, it led them to not address the things that were actually going on in their life with the assumption that if I just do this thing enough, those problems will get solved for me, that whatever my issues are will just be addressed by me focusing on this thing rather than actually addressing the issue itself. He came up with this term spiritual bypassing to describe that phenomenon that he started noticing.
Dedeker: I'm really intrigued by John Welwood, and I wish I had more time to look into him specifically because he wrote many, many books, not about this phenomenon, about other things. He wrote a lot about psychology and things like that, a little bit about Buddhism. I know he's not the first guy to have a moment like this, but I just imagine that moment a little bit of the Emperor has no clothes moment where it's like, okay, I see in this particular spiritual community we're all doing these things, but I feel like I can see where this isn't exactly a perfect approach.
There's a lot of flaws and a lot of things that people are glossing over. Being the guy to point that out, which I'm sure is maybe not easy, I'm sure probably stirred up a fair amount of controversy and pushback.
Jase: Not a popular thing.
Dedeker: It probably wasn't very popular.
Emily: Yes, for sure. From an article called The Only Way Out is Through the Peril of Spiritual Bypass, which was published in Counseling and Values, this article says spiritual bypass occurs when a person attempts to heal psychological wounds at the spiritual level only and avoids the important, albeit often difficult and painful work at other levels, including the cognitive, physical, emotional, and interpersonal.
I think when I hear the word spiritual, I know that that encompasses a lot of potentials, but it does make me think about, for instance, some of the people that I see on social media who say, I'm going through stuff that's really difficult right now, but God will get me through it, or I just need to look to the Lord or look to someone, anyone, or look to my spirituality in order to get clarity about that thing. I've always been puzzled by that because on our other show, our other podcast, famously, I am not a spiritual person or was raised in any spiritual way at all. I'm always curious about that because it's looking outward away from you to try to help you feel better or fix internal issues.
I just am like, "What's going on with that?" Can you elaborate all y'all?
Jase: I think that's an interesting point you bring up, too, because it also shows how this isn't just like, if you do this, you are spiritual bypassing and that's bad. They're like, none of those three things equal each other, that it's not just doing thing equals spiritual bypassing. It's not even spiritual bypassing always equals bad, which we'll get into as we go through this episode.
That one's an interesting one because it's like a meditation practice or prayer or having that faith that God is going to help you figure something out can be really helpful and can help you get perspective and get you out of your own head, maybe change your emotional attachment to this that hopefully can empower you to then actually do something and address the issue.
It's when it gets to this point where that's all you're doing and not addressing the thing is where it crosses over into this not sustainable, not healthy in the long-term way of doing things. That's such an interesting point to see it from the outside and being like, I don't know which one it is. I guess we can't ever really know that about someone else. Maybe it's obvious for some sometimes you're like, pretty sure that's what's going on.
Dedeker: Yes, as a preview, later in the episode, we are going to discuss what's the difference between spiritual bypassing and just having a healthy coping mechanism because there's quite a bit of overlap in that Venn diagram. We're going to hit you with one more definition. This is from a study titled The Opiate of the Masses, Measuring Spiritual Bypass and its Relationship to Spirituality, Religion, Mindfulness, Psychological Distress, and Personality. This was published in 2017 in Spirituality and Clinical Practice.
They say, "It's a defensive psychological posture cultivated by a tendency to privilege or exaggerate spiritual beliefs, emotions, or experiences over and against psychological needs, creating a means of avoiding or bypassing difficult emotions or experiences." That was a little more clinical and a little bit more heady, but I think we start to get the gist of the definition of spiritual bypassing.
I wanted to dive into a list of what this actually looks like in real life because it's very multifaceted and I think it can show up and look many different ways. The first thing that I want to clarify is that spiritual bypassing or avoidance behaviors can happen with any belief system, whether you're Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, whether you adhere to some just general spiritualishness. Also, even if you don't have a belief, even if you identify stronger with something like stoicism, for instance, that can still be manipulated in a particular way to help you avoid a problem rather than actually solving a problem.
Emily: Yes, specifically, we talked about that in our Toxic Positivity episode, which was 324. It's that idea that you just need to be more positive or be more cheerful or look on the bright side, throwing around those platitudes. Or I think if you're Christian, for example, something that I've heard, but again, don't know much about is throwing things like Scripture around. Maybe saying like, you're having a hard time, just pray about it.
Dedeker: Yes, the just pray about it. I was raised Christian and it was such a shutdown to a conversation, especially often if I was going to someone for maybe like a T3. I need advice or I need some help problem solving or I need some help making a decision. Sometimes it would come back as like, "Oh, just pray about it." Which-
Emily: -is unhelpful.
Dedeker: Well, often it was the person just being like, I don't want to think about your problems, or I have no idea what advice I would give here, and so that's the best that I can do. Or it literally is like, I don't have the time to talk about this right now. Any number of things like, well, just pray about it. Just pray about it. Just pray about it. Which to me felt like a true nothing statement, especially when I was a young person still figuring out myself in my life.
Emily: It's kind of a brush off.
Dedeker: That I'm like, that doesn't help me at all.
Emily: Yes. I was saying things like, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be. I've heard that one a lot. That's tough, too, because if you really want something to happen, for instance, and you're anxious about it and you want to discuss something with another person and they're like, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be.
Dedeker: We get that with relationships all the time, right?
Emily: Yes. If you are having a hard time with a relationship, or if you just got broken up with, or you can't find a relationship or something along those lines, a lot of people will just say, "Oh, you need to love yourself first before somebody is going to love you." There's things like just forgive and forget, or you just need to raise your vibration. I don't know what that means.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. Talk about an LA classic.
Emily: Yes, which I still am puzzled by what that even means. Then yes, love is all you need. You don't need other things in life. Just love. I don't know. There's some truth to that.
Dedeker: The Beatles did write that song that I do enjoy.
Emily: It's a good song.
Jase: It is an enjoyable song, but also an inaccurate statement, I would say. No, it's funny, actually. I was going to say one that when you were saying this list, Emily, one that came to my mind was one that you say a lot, which is it is what it is.
Dedeker: You're getting called out.
Emily: Yes, that's my mom's sentence.
Dedeker: Your mom getting called out.
Jase: Generational bypassing.
Emily: 100%. Yes. There you go. That's just more like, what can I do about it? Or it's fine.
Jase: Exactly. That's the theme to these ones is that, yes, there are times where it's like, it is what it is, or if it's meant to be, it'll be in terms of I'm freaking out, waiting to find out if I got a job. It's like, you can't do anything about it anymore. That makes sense. It's like, if it's meant to be, it'll happen or whatever comforts you, right?
Emily: Yes. That's true.
Jase: If it's my partner treats me really shitty, and it's like, it is what it is. It's like, no, no, that's not how that works. You do actually have some agency here and you can do something about this, even if that something might be leaving the relationship. It's that. They can be either one.
Dedeker: I appreciate that so far in this episode, all three of us have clearly identified how we all there is some difference.
Emily: How we're always throwing each other under the bus.
Dedeker: We all have our particular flavors of this.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Yes. Another example of how this can look in real life, I've definitely done this one sometimes too, which is constantly seeking out these bliss states via substances or meditation or yoga or sex or kink or lifting heavy weights is one that I did to get through a hard time in my life. Something that puts your body into a more intense state through an external stimulus. I don't even know if I would put meditation on this exact list here, although it certainly can do that.
I'm thinking with sex or kink with pain or substance use, drinking or getting high, that that kind of thing, it's like you're externally influencing your body chemistry to try to numb out, I guess, and get away from it. We also mentioned in that study called the opiate of the masses, which is talking about religion and spirituality. I've also heard people reference things like television as being the opiate of the masses. In a modern day where it's this, rather than address my problems, I'm just going to find ways to distract, to get away from it. Some other ways this can show up is in relationships as things like thinking that if you and your partner have the same spiritual practice or beliefs that that will sustain the relationship.
Emily: That is very important to some people, though-
Dedeker: Oh, sure.
Emily: -that I'm only going to be in a relationship with someone who shares the same religion as myself, for instance.
Dedeker: Sometimes that can lead to I meet someone, oh, we both love Jesus. Great. That's really all we need.
Emily: That's a good point.
Dedeker: We don't necessarily need to sit down and talk about our compatibilities, what we really want test out. How do we live together? How do we work through conflict? It really is like, Jesus, or this particular spiritual practice can save us, right? That's the thing. I don't want to--
Jase: It's like a way of overriding all the other important stuff.
Dedeker: I don't want to throw those people under the bus because I do think that having some sense of spiritual compatibility is a wonderful thing to look for in a relationship and can be a really important foundational piece of connection and also, like Jase said, sometimes that can just override or you can be lean on that a little too heavily.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: The other way I've seen this one is, especially when people are starting out with polyamory or non-monogamy, is like, I finally found someone who is comfortable being non-monogamous. Because I've struggled with that. I've just got to make this work. Even though they treat me like shit and they aren't very honest and all these other bad things or we're just really not compatible in these other important ways.
Finally, I found one person, the one person in the world who's like actually okay with non-monogamy can be another example of, oh, there's this one thing in common that I think is hard to find. I'm going to try to let that blanket over everything else. Then this can also show up in a negative way toward other people like avoiding contact with people who you consider not spiritual enough or unspiritual, where it's like, oh, no bad vibes here. Which can lead you to be really not compassionate, I guess, to others and just like, no, I can't deal with anyone's problems. Sorry. If you're having a problem, talk to someone else and that's not me.
Dedeker: Well, speaking of no bad vibes, that leads to this wonderful term that I ran across in the literature, which is anger phobia. It is this idea someone who refuses to feel or at least outwardly display things like disappointment, aggression, frustration, envy, jealousy. Basically a disconnection from all negative emotional experience. That can also manifest as refusing to confront other people, refusing to challenge other people, avoiding disagreeing with other people. Because again, sometimes these emotions get this weird, bad rap of if you're feeling this at all, you're not spiritual enough, or you're not enlightened enough, or you're not using your spiritual tools well enough. Not only can you not show it, it's also bad for you to even feel it.
Emily: Yes. Non-monogamous people get told that often when it comes to things like jealousy, that you're not doing it right or you need to figure your shit out if you ever feel jealousy because that's really not okay. Which we've talked about so many times. Jealousy is normal, it's understandable, it's okay.
Dedeker: Well, fun tangent about that. Something that came up in our last video discussion group for our Patreon community. Someone brought up the fact that they feel like they've identified a little bit of like a polyamorous micro cultural split, where it's like people who became non-monogamous or polyamorous before 2015 or so most likely got raised on this set of morals that was, like you said, Emily, if you're feeling jealousy, you're doing it wrong or you're doing something bad. Post 2015 there was more of a shift towards, no, jealousy is normal, no, polyamorous people do feel a jealousy. No, it's okay to feel this. I thought that was really fascinating.
Jase: Wow. Fascinating. The fact that it's pinned down to roughly a year of when you started being non-monogamous.
Dedeker: I think it tracks.
Jase: That's really interesting.
Dedeker: From my own anecdotal experience, I would love to hear from other people.
Emily: I wonder why you agree with this. What happened?
Emily: I don't know what happened. I know for me, I think 2015, 2016 was a year where there was a lot of cultural change in general, but for me, that's always the year that I cite where I started seeing many more people being out as non-monogamous. There was something that shifted and maybe it was tied to the US legalizing same-sex marriage. There were a lot of different cultural influences going on at the time.
Jase: I wonder if the fact that a really great non-monogamy podcast started around 2014.
Dedeker: See, I would love to take credit for that except for the fact that we're all those pre 2015 polyamorous people.
Emily: We probably, yes, I had some--
Dedeker: We probably didn't help that phenomenon.
Emily: Not great things to say about jealousy initially. We're better now about that, but.
Jase: We've we've changed our tune.
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: I'd say that that gets wrapped up. Maybe a little bit related to this is what I decided to call intellectual disassociation, which is having a rigid adherence to basically how logical and rational you are.
Emily: You're a Vulcan.
Dedeker: Yes. Now this is the deal is I don't think many people at first blush would consider that behavior or mindset to be spiritual bypassing. I've seen it come up so many times in my client base and it does tend to fall along gender lines. Like I do think we tend to reward, or at least think of men, like straight men in particular as being super rational and logical. The number of men that I've worked with where, oh, you're not rational and logical, you're literally just using that so you don't have to feel something uncomfortable. Because I can tell you have feelings or with a lot of clients it's, oh, yes, you have feelings. It's okay to feel angry, but the rest of it is you're just being rational and logical. Right?
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: Your partner is being totally emotional. I consider and sometimes this is like where some of the stoicism Bro-icisms come in. The more toxic side of of stoicism where I do truly think it is like an avoidance tactic.
Jase: Have we ever coined the term Bro-icism because that just occurred to me right now that, Bro-icism.
Dedeker: I'm surprised if it didn't come up in our stoicism episode.
Jase: Right? It feels like it should have.
Emily: Yes. I don't know. That's interesting.
Dedeker: The Bro-icism crowd.
Jase: Yes. Just to be clear, I think there's a ton of value in stoic philosophy. I actually enjoy a lot of it, but it can really easily lead to that. I guess the spiritual bypassing version of it. I was going to say the one I notice a lot for men in particular is using the logic or stoicism as a type of spiritual bypassing, specifically about fear. I think fear is one of those things that as men taught, you're not allowed to feel that. Right. That that makes you weak and cowardly and unattractive and all that stuff. Where I see it show up is that, well, I'm going to instead explain how logically, it just makes sense that other people need to change their behavior or my potentially toxic behavior to try to protect myself from fear is justified through this guise of logic or stoicism or whatever.
That's one that I've noticed. I've noticed myself do it in the past, but I see that one a lot because I think fear is, like you said, anger. Sure. That's acceptable, I think. Even sadness in the right circumstance, it's like fear is one of those ones that I think is very ironically very scary for men to express or to admit to a partner or something. That's where I can see that, well, I'm just going to use logic to instead try to get across what I want to say rather than feel it myself, and they don't even know that they're doing it.
Let's see, another example here is a dogmatic belief in a particular charismatic spiritual leader or a guru. This is where we get into codependent type behaviors. If this is someone personally or even like cultish behavior of that kind of, I'm going to offload all of my decision-making or important things about my life into this following of this one person and their teachings or their music or whatever it is.
Emily: I do want to go back again to non-monogamy a little bit there. because I feel like especially at some of those LA parties, there were certain people that were really renowned in the non-monogamous community. People would look to them perhaps for guidance or everyone wants to date this person or whatever along those lines. That is a question of are we going to be expressing our own individuality or just looking to someone for all the answers and in certain communities that maybe they have great things to say, but maybe they don't have great things to say. Perhaps we should be a little bit more careful and specific in who it is that we turn to in those ways.
Dedeker: For sure.
Jase: I think that's coming back to the key is the dogmatic piece of it's that I'm going to try to find what are like the rules or the things I can distill from this so I can just do those things, repeat those things. Try to feel those things so I don't have to make the hard decisions of actually figuring out what's the right thing to do in certain situations. That's a theme that comes up a lot on this show is just that there's not a lot of just clear rules that will always apply in all situations.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: I think this is a cool. topic because it's that thing of everything we're talking about in this has good stuff to it and has good uses that can be really productive and really helpful, but it can cross this line into becoming this bypassing. The last one we have on our list here is strongly identifying with yourself. Being an enlightened being or spiritually superior person. Being a little bit cheeky by saying, identifying as an enlightened being, but that thing of I really identify with how chill I am all the time, or I'm known as the one who's so unflappable.
I'm ice cold. I'm always really rational or I'm always at peace. No worries. Always secure. Those things aren't, again, not necessarily bad in themselves, but when you have to fight hard to maintain that identity can lead to that temptation to be like, "Well, I've just got to spiritually bypass because if I feel these things, that's not me. I'm not allowed to."
Dedeker: It reminded me of a funny thing, another anecdotal thing that's come up in my work with clients that I started to identify that there's a certain type of person who really proudly identifies as having a secure attachment style. Often in reality, they're actually just avoidant. That's been a weird particular trope that started to come up is, weirdly, I feel like the people who actually are secured aren't often going to be talking about it.
Jase: That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that one, but that makes sense.
Dedeker: I'm keeping an eye on that trend.
Emily: Interesting question of ego inflated ego and stuff there as well. We want to move on to talking about why people spiritually bypass. What exactly is going on here? Because, again, all of these things that we've discussed, they're not necessarily bad. I think done in correct dosages. If you're not just overwhelmingly-
Jase: Doctor recommended dosage.
Emily: Exactly. Just pouring an entire carton of sugar into your matcha latte. That might be a little much.
Dedeker: What a metaphor.
Emily: You got to take it in small doses. Exactly. The last study that we talked about, the opiate of the masses published in spirituality clinical practice, it identifies four reasons that spiritual bypassing may happen or some of the causes of spiritual bypassing. The first one is to escape from reality or the ordinariness of life. The next one is to avoid pain. The third is to cope with problematic social context. Then finally, to avoid the negative influence of religious leaders and communities. Whoa.
Jase: That's an interesting one. I didn't even think about that. I think we talked about this in the context of relationships where we said, if you have similar beliefs or similar values, it's like, "Oh, that's going to override the fact that they treat me poorly or whatever." I think that this can show up in spiritual communities too, where it's, "Oh this person is maybe abusing their position of leadership, or they're shitty in this case, but because we're in this religion together, or I have this one, I'm going to think, well, it can't be them because we share this belief and I believe that anyone who believes this is good, therefore, it can't be a problem with them. I've got to find a way around this." That's that spiritual bypassing, which I've seen lead to a lot of snarky, passive-aggressive comments, usually.
Dedeker:
Emily: Can I ask to cope with problematic social contexts? I don't know. Well, for instance, I have heard of certain communities where a person is getting divorced, for instance, and they're shunned by that community just because they would even think about getting divorced or be in the process of getting divorced. I've heard other people say, well, I would never get divorced because that's not in scripture or whatever. I do also wonder if it's because they want to avoid the repercussions of the community saying that's not an okay thing.
Dedeker: Sure. To me, honestly, if it were up to me, I would just collapse all of these reasons into avoiding pain and discomfort. Because that's what it all tends to chuck up to. Whether it is, there's something about my life reality that's uncomfortable to me, or I'm in a social context, or I'm in a weird religion or cult or whatever. That's where the cognitive dissonance is getting too uncomfortable. To me all boils down to avoiding the pain and discomfort of something, whether it's external, internal, whatever.
Emily: When you were having a hard time in your relationships, did that cause you to be like, "I'm going to turn to this thing in order to avoid the pain?" Did your brain do that or was it just done without you really thinking about it that hard? Did you make the decision where was the chicken and where was the egg?
Dedeker: Oh, God. I don't know. Both the chicken and egg were in my brain. I don't know.
Emily: Did you make the decision knowingly?
Dedeker: I really don't know. No. I don't think there was a part of me that thought about it, that black and white where I'm uncomfortable or I'm struggling with something, ergo I will do this thing. There's more in the soup than that for me. Some of it is like what you talked about early on in the episode, that sometimes we can feel, "Oh, well, I'm disempowered in my relationship because maybe my partner doesn't listen to me, or we just fight all the time, or they're not willing to work on the relationship."
If I can just work on myself as much as possible, if I can just make myself perfect or make myself not need anything, or basically just turn myself into a monk or a nun who's just floats above the ground and doesn't need anything, then the relationship will work. When you say it like that, it's like, well, clearly that's silly and isn't going to work, but sometimes you can get so desperate in a relationship situation that's not pleasant. Because, really, you just want to be happy and you want the other person to be happy. Sometimes you could just end up in this situation where it's like, "Well, I need to trick myself or fit myself into this particular shape in order for that to work."
Emily: It sounds like it's a coping mechanism that's potentially happening without you knowing, without you making a concerted effort to do the thing. You're just trying to go in a direction of what's going to help me feel better about the situation.
Dedeker: I think it's slippery. Yes, 100%.
Jase: I think that even though we might see this portrayed in a movie or a song like the substance use example. We might see that and go, "Oh, obviously they're portraying that someone's made this choice of this way to cope with their life that they're unhappy with." I think the reality of it when a person's doing it is it's more of this gradual slide into this. This makes things more manageable.
Let me do more of it. Let me do more of it with whether it's meditation or exercise or spirituality or whatever. It's like, "Oh, this thing worked a little bit. I'm going to do more of that." "Oh, that this is solving my problem." I think it makes sense because it does help some, that's the whole point. That's the slippery slope. Is that these things do help, but they can also distract.
Dedeker: It could be something that doesn't seem that nefarious. It could be, my partner and I fight all the time, but when we get into kink space together and play out this particular scene, then it feels really good afterwards. Then we feel really connected and I feel really loved and they feel really loved. We don't fight for the rest of the day, but then we're at each other's throats six days a week.
We keep turning towards this particular thing where for some couples have worked with, it's like, "Yes, we're at each other's throats and then we do Molly together. We go do an ayahuasca retreat together." Especially like a spiritualized version of substance use sometimes. Which again, I don't want to knock it necessarily. I don't want to knock it, but it really is that when there's the pattern over time of, this is the only time when things feel good in the relationship, so we keep turning towards this thing, whatever it is.
Emily: What happens when it stops working?
Dedeker: Well, that too, right?
Jase: Right. We're going to go on and talk about how this differs from healthy coping mechanisms. What can we do about it if we think we might be someone who's spiritually bypassing? First we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show. If you do really enjoy this show, it helps us out a ton. We put the show out there to everyone for free. If you just take a moment to listen to our advertisers, check out our Patreon, if there's a stuff you value, it really does go a long way to help us keep giving this content out to everyone for free. If you can't just give it a listen and then keep listening to the rest of the episode.
We're back. Now the question, is this really all that bad, though? What's at risk? To start this one off, one is, as we've mentioned a lot, is this stagnation and passivity that these problems can perpetuate without ever being resolved. Because I'm just finding ways to avoid dealing with them or feeling them at all. Another could be this then alienation and disconnection from others around you. This could be, as we mentioned, being dismissive of needs or requests, or even boundaries of other people. Whether that takes the form of, good vibes only, I don't want to listen to that, or it's feeling like someone else should spiritually bypass instead of dealing with their problem like just do what I did. You shouldn't feel jealousy, just read these books and then you won't feel it or just recite this mantra and you won't feel it or just pray about it and you'll be okay. As a way of like, I'm not dealing with your problems and that can end up leading you to be alienated from the others around you. This can show up in a lot of different ways.
Dedeker: Yes. There can also be a risk of internalized shame. Emily, you asked that question of like, well what happens when whatever thing it is stops working for you? That's the thing is inevitably you're going to feel things, inevitably you're going to feel negative emotions, you're going to feel discomfort even if you have a wonderful life, that's just a part of life, you're going to feel some discomfort. Someone's going to disappoint you, someone's going to hurt your feelings. You're going to have to go through something you didn't think you were going to have to go through.
It's like you're going to feel something "negative" and whatever spiritual technique or coping mechanism you have at some point, it's like it's not going to insulate you. That can create this sense of internalized shame where it's like, "Oh, I'm doing all the right things. Why am I feeling this way?" Or I thought that my meditation made me feel so blissed out last time. How come I'm still feeling this way now this time around, so like sometimes you can set yourself up there. I know, again, on the meta level with the polyamorous community, that sense of, oh, I'm feeling jealousy. I'm not a good polyamorous person.
I'm feeling envy, I'm not doing this right. As we talked about before, there can be almost an addictive draw to not just particular substances, if that's what's been getting you through relationship issues, but also certain behaviors. It can set you up to maybe have a higher tolerance than you should have for inappropriate behaviors from others or a higher tolerance for being abused or mistreated because again, if you feel like, well, really the problem is me, I just need to work on my reactions. I just need to become the person who's totally unflappable, then it'll be okay for people to treat me like shit basically, which is not great.
Then on the flip side, it can set you up for an abandonment of personal responsibility. Whether it's feeling disempowered in a relationship, whether it's, I have this belief that, oh, I can't be this vulnerable, or I can't ask my partner for this, so I just need to swallow it and take it. Or always dodging ownership. This idea of like, oh, my partner's upset with what I did. Well, sounds like they need to figure their shit out, or they need to be more logical about it. Or they need to figure their shit out. That it sets you up to, yes. Just to not be very empowered in your relationships, I think.
?Emily: I'm curious, when you found yourself doing this in the past, was there a time where you eventually found, hey, this isn't working out in the way that I want it to, or it clearly is just a coping mechanism that's trying to allow me to brush off the stuff that I really need to look into or focus on in the relationship. Was there a time where that switch happened or do you think it was gradual?
Dedeker: Yes and no. I think my progress on this has been non-linear. I'll say that first and foremost, I think there's been some ups and downs and back and forth. There is one moment that always stands out to me. It was from many, many years ago when I was in a relationship with someone who wasn't great, who wasn't really nice to me, but this was such a formative moment because I had said to him like that I was upset about something or that there was something that he did that I really didn't like. I was like, "But let's talk about it later" and then I went and I meditated and then I came out of it later and was like, "Oh, we don't need to talk about it anymore. I meditated and now it's okay".
He was the one who was actually like, "No, actually we should talk about it. I'm glad that you meditated. I'm glad you feel calm, but we should talk about this." That may have been the first time I got that message directly from someone that I was in a relationship with. Now that didn't make me learn my lesson necessarily, but it was part of that soup I suppose, that ultimately helped me to be able to see that behavior for what it was.
Jase: Yes, that goes back to the idea of enabling too, that we talked about like with codependency and things on previous episodes. Sometimes these things don't become parent until you're in a different relationship or make a new friend or change jobs. That was one for me when I changed jobs a couple years ago, was like, "Wow, I didn't realize quite how bad my previous job was in terms of just like the work culture and stress and things like that," because I was in it and I'd been in it for so many years that I just didn't even see it. It's just, "Oh, well I've just got to find ways to cope and get through it the best I can," and sometimes we do for a certain amount of time, but it sometimes takes that counter example to finally go, "Wow, I had no idea there was a different way this even could be."
Emily: It's great to find perspective on that finally, I'm really interested in checking out the difference between what might be a healthy coping mechanism versus what is just spiritual bypassing. I'm going to brush something under the rug and hope that I never have to look at it or see it again. I think it's difficult sometimes to know like, when am I crossing over that line into this is unhealthy versus this is something that's going to be a tool to help me in the moment when things are challenging.
You can ask yourself whatever it is that you're doing a meditation practice, a Yoga practice, prayer. I'm going to read the Bible or read Walt Whitman because it calms me down or whatever. Dedeker's definitely into that one.
Dedeker: The endless callouts.
Emily: There you go. Exactly.
Dedeker: Callouts on top of callouts.
Emily: You can ask yourself, does this practice encourage either turning away and avoiding, versus turning towards an accepting. I love that because I think that so many of these things are about acceptance and are about understanding that we in the world have things that we can control and things that we can't control. I think at its best, maybe things like spirituality allow us to be able to see our place in the world and that we are smaller than we think we are in a lot of ways, but that we also have the capacity to change and make things better or worse. We have the capacity to talk to our partners about challenges that we have and that we face.
If your practice enables you to be able to do that, if your meditation allows for some clarity, for instance, then that's great. If you are doing meditation to try to get away from a problem, maybe that's an issue. You can also question whether you are denying the reality of your problem versus seeking solutions for the problem. Also, look at things like, am I just getting a short-term benefit? Am I band-aid-ing over the issue? Versus a long-term benefit. I know my partner has a very steady meditation practice. He meditates like every day for 10 minutes at least and he says that it's enabled him to look at some of his feelings as things that occur, but that aren't necessarily realities or truths that he can let them happen, look at it objectively, and then know that like new feelings and emotions are going to happen at a later time as well.
I know for myself, being able to look objectively at a feeling, if I'm feeling really tense about something over a long period of time, I know that it's going to be fleeting. It's not going to last forever and that I think is something that meditation, for instance, can teach us that nothing is forever.
Dedeker: I wanted to talk about the acceptance piece a little bit. We touched on this back in episode 312 where we did a dive into psychological flexibility and acceptance and commitment therapy, and I want to clarify, this stuff can be so tricky and so slippery. It's like there can be this shadow side of acceptance that is the, "Oh, well this is just shitty, I just have to deal with it. I just have to accept that it is what it is and this is how it's going to be." Versus this sense of, I can accept the way that I feel, like I can accept the feelings that are coming up for me about this situation and now what does that tell me to do? I can accept that, I don't know, the state of the world makes me really angry.
I can talk about that anger, I can share that, I can use that anger to motivate me to make some change. Which is different from, I guess maybe like defeat or resignation perhaps, and the same in in relationships. I don't think it's a mistake that we keep coming back to the example of someone like not treating you very well in relationships because it's like you can have this version of acceptance that really is turning away and avoiding, that really is, yes my partner doesn't treat me well or my partner's doing something I really don't like. I just have to deal with it.
Versus I can actually get curious about what I'm feeling. I can let myself feel it and then that can inspire me to take some action or at least evaluation, of like, how do I deal with this? How do I deal with this problem?
Jase: Something else that came up, Emily, when you were talking about denying the reality of the problem versus seeking a solution for the problem. That's another one where I think this depends on the situation. There are certain things that there is not a solution to the problem. That that just is, it is what it is, quite literally and , some examples of that could be a chronic injury or a disability or something.
Or it could just be the fact that we're all going to die someday, that can be really distressing. In those cases, yes, finding a way to get as much acceptance of that thing is the healthy choice. That is the only thing you can do. That's better, I would say, than just constantly being in a state of distress over the fact that nothing is permanent like you said, Emily.
On the other hand, like we've been talking about in relationships, it can lead us to stay in a shitty relationship. I don't even want to say shitty, but a relationship that's not a good fit. Maybe your partner doesn't treat you shitty because they're a bad person, but maybe they just have very different values about things than you do. Maybe you align in certain ways but not others to the point that this is causing a lot of pain and suffering potentially for both of you. That is a problem you can fix or at least do things about. You have some influence there.
I think that's one of the keys here, is seeing do I have any influence on this thing. It might not be so black and white of just, "Oh yes, I can just fix it. Why don't I just do that?" Then we get into the other shitty dismissive side of like, "Oh, your feelings aren't valid because you should just fix it." It's like if someone is upset about their job, just get a different one. It's like, it's not that easy. That's not always how that works. On the other hand, there's something when you use spiritual bypassing to just accept being in a shitty unhealthy work situation forever because you're not doing anything to try to get out of it.
Again, it's that balance of these things are useful at times. Maybe it's like I've got to use some of these techniques to get through working at this job at all and to try to still have enough energy left to be applying for other jobs or learning a different skill or something to try to get out of it, versus just completely bypassing and not doing any of those things. With all of it, I really just want to be clear that we're not saying to anyone, "Oh, you can fix anything. You should just do that. Just put your mind to it. Just think positive thoughts and then it's solved," because that's another spiritual bypassing all over again-
Dedeker: For sure.
Jase: -but a different way.
Dedeker: Well, what do we do about all this? If you think that this is you or you see some of yourself in this, what do you do about it?
Jase: The first one here in that, Dedeker, you wrote this in the notes but is to get a vibe check, outside sorts.
Emily: I know. I was like, "What does that mean? What are the vibes, man?"
Jase: I love it.
Dedeker: Like a reality check.
Jase: Yes. I like that. Just an outside perspective to ask someone you trust. This could be a counselor or a therapist or coach or it just could be a trusted friend or someone that you believe would be honest with you, and ideally someone who's not into the same particular spiritual practice, because they might have a little bit of motivation to defend the thing. Even if maybe if they were being honest they would say, "Yes, I think you're going too far with it." Maybe get someone from a different perspective, although not someone who's so antagonistic that they're going to say anything you do with that is spiritual bypassing. I guess that one is a little bit of a challenge but maybe get a few different opinions.
Dedeker: Something you can experiment with is if you think that there's a particular behavior that you suspect might be an avoidance behavior from yourself, you can see what if I disconnect from this behavior, this practice, this substance of choice, and track what happens. I think it's good to create a specific container to experiment in.
As in, tonight, while my partner is out on a date, I'm going to avoid getting high, I'm going to do other things and see what that's like, or this week I'm going to put my daily meditation practice on pause and just see what happens, or the next time that my partner is unpacking their stressful day with me, I'm going to avoid just throwing platitudes at them. I'm going to see what it's like to just listen and empathize, if that's what they want.
If they've specifically asked you for some platitudes, that's different. Again, always have to shout out the triforce of communication. I think it's helpful to just find something to experiment with and keep track. You can track in a journal what comes up for you, the good, the bad, the ugly, the feelings that come up. That can give you some information about what shows up when this particular element is removed.
Jase: Even on a lighter note, this is one that I've found myself trying to do in the last several months, is when I'm in between things, I will often immediately reach for my earbuds to listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video or somehow stimulate myself, even if the thing I'm feeling overwhelmed by is how much stimulation there is. There's so many things to do. There's my to-do list. There's all these calls and I find myself just knee-jerk reaction reaching for some kind of escape. You could say maybe some type of spiritual bypassing.
This just happened to me earlier today where I was like, "You know what? I'm going to not do that right away. I might eventually, but just for a moment, I'm just going to let myself be not stimulated." It was, honestly, scary because I was in a state of just being very overwhelmed and it was that "Whew, okay boy, yes, there's something here that's made me aware that there's something going on right now."
Emily: The next thing you can do is think about integration into your life. Ask yourself if the benefits of your practice carry over into other aspects of your life. For example, when we talked about the kink practice or going to kink every time you and your partner are having a challenging time and you find that that really works out well for you, but does doing that actually help you in the rest of your relationship, or is it just acting as a band-aid to the bigger problems that are plaguing the two of you? Looking at things like that.
Also, this is one that when you, Dedeker, were talking about your own spiritual bypassing, I know that during that same time with potentially the same partner, I was doing yoga five to six days a week. That was just to get myself out of my head for this one hour and to do something external that made my body feel really good, but then when I came back to my regular life after that hour, I had to figure out and sit with my regular life.
That felt like a band-aid during that time as well because the things that it is supposed to be giving you, while they can be really good, I think the underlying stuff wasn't being addressed and so therefore it wasn't having the effect that I wanted by just going and doing all the yoga all the time.
Dedeker: I guess that comes back to that evaluating. Is this giving me a short-term benefit versus a long-term benefit?
Emily: Yes. There are definitely great benefits to it, but in that moment, perhaps that's not actually what I needed. Just ask yourself, do you feel like you can actually sit and live with those uncomfortable emotions and come out on the other side, or am I just putting a ton of band-aids all over my body and hoping that that'll make me feel better in some way?
Jase: Lastly, with all of this is have some patience and compassion for yourself in this. If you see this and you go, "Yaikos, I'm definitely doing some of this," clearly on this episode, we've all--
Dedeker: All of us.
Emily: Like getting into a reset.
Jase: It's like, yes, there's areas where we do it and I think that that's not necessarily a bad thing, but becoming aware of it and realizing, what's a way I could start changing that? What are some little things that I could do like some of these suggestions? It doesn't have to be a, "Oh, okay, that wasn't the solution. Let me throw out this spiritual practice and find a different one that will work," or, "Oh, this didn't work. It must be that religion was the fault. I'm going to instead go to skepticism atheist practices. Maybe that's the answer."
That it's more about just have some patience and see what little changes you can do. How does that change things? What are areas where you might have more agency than you realize, and what are areas where this is just something that you need to accept? Even if you can't change it right away, maybe there's other things that you can start to slowly move in the direction that you want.
Dedeker: I really do think that sometimes you just need a dose of relief. I think that that's okay if it's in the short term. I think it's okay if it's not the only thing that you're turning to to feel okay. This is something that's come up in my practice doing somatic experiencing work with people in particular, is sometimes you're working with people where they're not fully out of a traumatic situation in their relationship or in their life or their living situation is unstable.
I think this comes up for all different kinds of therapies and practices, but it's like sometimes I can't change this person's circumstances that they're actively working through. By helping to give them a little bit of a safe space and a little bit of relief and a little bit of validation, even though it's not really solving the problem, maybe bringing them from a level 10 to a level 9 is still something that can help them access, again, more of that sense of agency or more clarity of thought around the situation.
That's the more broad example, but sometimes I'm also like, I don't know. If you're just miserable, you're spiraling by yourself while your partner is on a date or something like that and getting on your yoga mat helps you get through that, I'm like, yes, do it. If it's like this is the 15th time this has happened and I've had to turn to the yoga mat every single time and I'm just miserable the minute that I'm off the mat. I'm like, "Maybe we need to examine that," but it's the kind of thing where it's like sometimes you need to reach for some short-term relief.
You need to use some of these things as a coping mechanism in order to enable you to have that energy and well-being to actually look towards the bigger issues. I do think a lot of this just requires some self-honesty combined with self-compassion. Folks, we want to hear from you, so you can go to our Instagram stories. We're going to be throwing up this question we want to hear, how do you know when you are spiritually bypassing something difficult?