When I first learned about the idea of “spiritual bypassing,” it was shattering to my parts. I felt busted, lost, ashamed, scared, embarrassed, and deflated. Here I thought I was an advanced spiritual being, capable of loving even the most intolerable asshats on the planet with a generous heart and unconditional love. I could forgive anyone, even Osama Bin Laden, since all humans are deserving of love and compassion, and hurt people hurt people. I regularly listened to my spirit guides, followed what I thought was spiritual guidance, meditated for hours in 21 day vipassana retreats, and pursued enlightenment with the same kind of disciplined rigor with which I’d pursued a medical degree in my twenties and New York Times bestseller status in my forties.
What is spiritual bypassing, you might ask? Spiritual bypassing is the use of spiritual ideas, practices, or beliefs to avoid facing unresolved emotional pain, psychological wounds, or relational difficulties. Instead of working through grief, anger, shame, or trauma, a person may “bypass” those uncomfortable feelings by turning prematurely to transcendence, positivity, forgiveness, or detachment.
The term was coined by psychologist and spiritual teacher John Welwood in the 1980s, who observed that many spiritual practitioners were using spirituality as a defense mechanism rather than as a path of healing, integration, and wholeness. He realized that spiritual bypassing practices might include:
- Minimizing suffering with clichés like “everything happens for a reason” or “just stay positive.”
- Using meditation, prayer, or ritual to suppress painful emotions rather than process them and move them through your body and psyche
- Overemphasizing love and light while ignoring anger, injustice, or shadow aspects of the psyche
- Forgiving others before fully acknowledging and grieving the harm done.
At its core, spiritual bypassing is less about spirituality itself and more about avoidance — a protective strategy that tries to leapfrog over the hard, messy work of healing and integration. As author of Spiritual Bypassing Robert Augustus Masters put it, spiritual bypassing is conflict avoidance in holy drag.
I was guilty of all that, yet I was unaware that I was even doing so until I read Robert’s book. I hadn’t realized I was blended with what IFS calls a Self-like part, parts that masquerade as Self but have an agenda to bypass suffering and skip over hard feelings and unprocessed traumas.
I was so blessed to discover IFS in 2013, within a month of realizing what I was doing. I honestly don’t know how I would have handled that insight had I not found the antidote to spiritual bypassing so swiftly, thanks to my cousin and IFS therapist Rebecca Ching.
The good news is that I did find IFS, and I’ve been practicing it ever since. The sad thing about waking up to one’s spiritual bypassing tendencies is that some people throw the baby out with the bathwater and discard spirituality altogether, especially if they have parts that have been victims of spiritual abuse.
If you’ve been spiritually bypassing or you’re trying to reconnect to your spirituality on the other side of spiritual bypassing recovery, I wanted to let you know that IFS founder Dick Schwartz is teaching an online program with Sounds True “The Spirituality of Internal Family Systems–A Practice-Based Journey to Your Sacred Self,”
Learn more and register for The Spirituality of Internal Family Systems here.
In this immersive 10-week experience, you’ll explore:
- Dr. Schwartz’s eye-opening journey from skeptical rationalist to spiritually receptive scientist convinced by the firsthand evidence
- The reality of helpful guides and ancestor spirits – Their regular appearance in client-therapist sessions, their relationship to Self, the verifiable information and guidance they bring, and how to work with them
- Why the core Self is more than just a psychological state – How it connects all of us to the Greater Consciousness, Divine, or God of the world’s wisdom traditions
- Accessing the energy of Self to heal and restore ourselves and others physically, emotionally, and spiritually
- Unattached burdens – Experiences described across spiritual traditions as harmful external energies, and how to engage Self-energy to protect ourselves
- Striking parallels between IFS therapy and shamanic and psychedelic journeys, and how to integrate their methods to heal and more fully connect with Self
- Using IFS with traditional spiritual practices – Which meditations and contemplative techniques can impede IFS work and which ones can support it
- Intergenerational and cultural burdens and traumas – How they are passed from parent to child—and even throughout entire societies—and how we can invite the restorative presence of Self together
- An in-depth, practice-based program with eight immersive guided exercises to allow you to experience the spiritual facets of IFS for yourself
Find spirituality on the other side of spiritual bypassing here.
If you’re brand new to IFS and you’re looking for a beginner course, I’m also teaching an IFS weekend Zoom workshop October 4-5 IFS For Self-Healing. It’s an IFS basics course that can prepare you to begin your spiritual bypassing recovery and pursue healing, integration and wholeness, whether you identify with the spirituality of IFS or not.
Learn more and register for IFS For Self-Healing here.
Mark Nepo sums it all up best in Unlearned Your Way Back To God.
“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace.
Psychologists refer to this place as the Psyche, while Theologians identify it as the Soul. Jung recognizes it as the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters as Atman, Buddhists as Dharma, Rilke as Inwardness, Sufis as Qalb, and Jesus as the Center of our Love.
Understanding this core of Inwardness means understanding our true essence, not based on external markers of identity like our occupation or appearance, but by recognizing our connection to the Infinite and embracing it. This is a lifelong challenge, as the process of becoming often obscures our starting point, while the essence of being gradually erodes all that is non-essential. Each of us navigates this ongoing tension, at times losing sight of our true selves, only to be guided back to that timeless center of grace within us.
When the layers are peeled away, we experience moments of enlightenment, wholeness, and Satori, as described by Zen sages, where our inner and outer selves align, leading to a sense of complete integrity and Oneness. Whether these layers are cultural influences, memories, mental constructs, religious teachings, trauma, or worldly knowledge, the process of shedding them and rediscovering that core of grace is the aim of all forms of therapy and education.
Regardless of the subject matter, the most valuable lesson to impart is how to uncover that original center and how to dwell in it once it is unveiled. The obscuring of this center is likened to a numbing of the heart, and the journey back, whether through pain or love, is the path to unlearning and returning to God.”
― Mark Nepo, Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness, 1985-2005