When faced with traumas or life changing events, often many of us will turn to our spirituality or faith to assist and support us in not only making sense of but also being able to overcome, and reengage with our lives.
However, the danger can be that instead of drawing on our faith for strength and support we can engage in what is known as “Spiritual Bypassing.” This is where people attempt to use their faith or spirituality to avoid genuine contact with the psychological or emotional impacts of these events.
The negative impact of this is that we attempt to use spiritual practices or ideas to avoid facing emotional or psychological challenges. Which can result in unfinished developmental tasks or the formation of psychological wounds.
When dealing with something traumatic or life changing, we attempt to transcend this through a process of having dealt with loss and the associated emotional processes, so as to come to a point of acceptance and reengaging with our lives in a new and unique manner, post trauma or loss. As such both we and our lives are different but can engage in a new and unique manner.
When we engage in spiritual bypassing, we are attempting to prematurely transcend these challenges. In this manner we attempt to skip all the uncomfortable and challenging emotions which are required to be processed so as to engage in a new and meaningful way with our lives.
The result is that we attempted to move back into our lives dismissing our basic human needs, feelings, psychological problems and perhaps physical changes. In so doing we are unable to go beyond our current situation, and set ourselves up for failure through future challenges and unhappiness.
Spirituality and faith can be incredibly helpful in times of distress, however it is important that we do not uses these as a way of trying to escape the human condition but rather to engage with them in a way which helps us to engage and flourish within the human experience.