Spiritual Bypass and Healthy Recovery
It’s a most human tendency to avoid hard things. All of us do it, at least to some degree.
One of the common techniques we use to avoid difficult or troubling situations is emotional bypass, finding a way to discount, rationalize or dismiss something with a saying, a truism, any thought that shuts down the awful feelings of fear, despair or overwhelming confusion.
For example, hearing of a terrible accident resulting in someone’s death, we might say to ourselves, ‘well everyone has their time, this was theirs’.
What’s wrong with that response?
Emotional bypass short-cuts the suffering so we don’t have to deal with the struggles of life. We miss the opportunity to experience reality for what it is and the resulting growth that is possible.
In the above example, we grow by genuinely experiencing the emotions that come up.
When we risk openness to challenging feelings we learn more from life.
Maybe we learn life is fragile.
Maybe we think about the life we have and are more grateful for it.
Maybe we consider the suffering of others and actually look for opportunities to be useful to someone else in their difficulties.
If we are open to what life brings us, and engage it, we grow, we change, we contribute. And when we engage reality and do the work, no suffering is ever wasted.
A particular category of emotional bypass is spiritual bypass, and both Christians and folks in recovery are quite susceptible to it. What is spiritual bypass?
Spiritual Bypass
John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypass” in an article, “Principles of Inner Work: Psychological and Spiritual” for the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1984.
In his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Welwood described spiritual bypass as “using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings and developmental tasks….”
Building on Welwood’s work, a very useful resource on spiritual bypass and recovery is Ingrid Mathieu’s Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in Your Spiritual Practice.
In it she writes, “Spiritual bypass is a defense mechanism by which we use spiritual practices or beliefs to avoid our emotional wounds, unwanted thoughts or impulses, or threats to our self-esteem” (p. 2).
Examples of Spiritual Bypass
An illustration of spiritual bypass is thinking that if we pray enough, pray the right way or have enough faith, then our problems will be solved. The implicit lie here is that in the answer to our prayers we’ll find we don’t have to suffer, struggle with difficult thoughts or feelings, or deal with pain.
Early in recovery the slogan ‘just turn it over’ means to access spiritual help by praying. And initially in recovery that can be helpful. But as an ongoing, exclusive strategy for handling life, it’s escapist thinking and it doesn’t work, because there is more work for us to do than simply give our problems back to God.
Spiritual bypass, then is using spirituality, theology or religion in various forms, to reduce stress and avoid pain, discomfort and the work we need to do. Christians as well as recovering folks are vulnerable to spiritual bypass.
We might use scripture verses or theological truths to comfort ourselves or others, inadvertently short-cutting the emotional pain we need to feel and the emotional work we’d benefit by doing. We say things like:
“It’s God’s will that….”
“God knew he needed her more in heaven than you needed her on earth.”
“You know, he’s not suffering anymore, he’s in a better place.”
“You’re young, you can always have more children.”
Spiritual bypass is the ultimate ‘don’t feel’ or ‘you don’t have to feel’ technique.
Spiritual bypass thoughts can be accurate biblical or systematic theology and at the same time unhealthy practical theology.
Not All Spiritual Bypass is Bad
“Act as if” is one of the earliest recovery slogans, along with “fake it till you make it”, meaning if we act according to how we want to be, our feelings will follow, we’ll get our life together.
“Act contrary” is a similar idea: do something contrary to old patterns and current impulses. If I’m feeling cravings, instead of acting on them, call my sponsor.
In the early stages of recovery these are helpful techniques. Mathieu calls this “adaptive” use of spiritual bypass, using bypass techniques to help us stabilize until we can eventually do the deeper work.
But they’re transitional in nature, meant for an initial and relatively short phase.
So later in recovery, we might inadvertently use “act as if” to make us feel better, but now we’re avoiding circumstances we need to face.
And ‘act as if’ and other bypass thinking like it, can be a recovery based version of a prosperity gospel teaching slogan: ‘name it, claim it’. The prosperity gospel is not a teaching of Jesus’ Gospel. It leads to a materialistic focused rewards-based recovery. Which isn’t authentic recovery at all.
If we continue deeper into our recovery still using the slogan ‘fake it till you make it’ we may inadvertently be covering up our need for deeper psychological work.
Sooner, rather than later, we need to engage another slogan, ‘learn to take life on life’s terms’ meaning we have to engage life as it really is, not as we’d like it to be.
Adaptive and Maladaptive Spiritual Bypass
Mathieu writes, “Adaptive experiences of spiritual bypass can provide you with a sense of protection from relapse and a safeguard from emotions that might be too overwhelming to feel at a particular time.” (p. 167) And so “…a person can maintain physical sobriety long enough for deeper issues to be addressed at a later time.”
After a while, however, adaptive uses turn into maladaptive uses of spiritual bypass. “A defense mechanism becomes maladaptive when it has overstayed its usefulness, when it becomes rigid and is getting in the way of a person’s development.” (p. 167)
Why Confront Spiritual Bypass?
One of the primary reasons we unconsciously develop and utilize addictive behaviors is to mask feelings.
Spiritual bypass is similar to addictive behaviors in that it may have a short-term benefit, but is not a sustainable long-term strategy. Both are tactics either to fix or mask our problems rather than helping us to face and endure them.
Spiritual bypass and addiction are both short-cuts to comfort. Each is a method of helping us avoid what we really need to face. They are coping mechanisms, solutions we stumble upon to help us feel better.
Ultimately, neither work, because both strategies fragment our lives and dull us to the only comfort that truly works, that lasts, that matters: the ongoing experience of abiding in the love of our Father in heaven, while living in the real world.
So in recovery, while early on there can be some helpful, adaptive uses of spiritual bypass, eventually it’s essential to discover and discard our spiritual bypass usage as it keeps us from experiencing all the feelings, emotions and circumstances of our reality.
As Mathieu writes, “Spiritual bypass is just another way we defend ourselves from the painful realities of life.” (p. 4)
We were never meant to be free of our feelings, impulses or circumstances.
We are meant to live in the real world and grow into connected, caring and compassionate people.
Healthy recovery (and healthy spirituality) doesn’t happen without us discovering and accepting the truth about who we are, how we think, what we feel and how we behave.
So healthy recovery—and let’s be clear, healthy spirituality—requires that we learn how we use spiritual bypass as a technique for mishandling our sexual struggles, and all other struggles, too.
Maybe even more importantly, we must recognize we are trying to control God. It’s essential to our well-being that we recognize and let go of that illusion.
Healthy Recovery, Spiritual Bypass and What Can We Do?
So what can we do to confront and deal with spiritual bypass in our approach to recovery?
Mathieu identifies two essential elements we need and I have three more:
Learn and adopt an attitude of humility: we’re no better than anyone else and we’re no worse than anyone else; we are not the center of the universe and at the same time we belong to the Center of the universe.
Cultivate a practice of continual acceptance of every emotion we are experiencing, the feelings that come with those emotions and the reality of our current experiences; acceptance isn’t a path of making everything okay, positive or even enjoyable; acceptance is the pathway to the Truth; knowing what is real and what is true is the way we can learn to tolerate reality.
Develop awareness of our expectations, implicit, assumed and hidden.
Continually surrender our expectations of certain outcomes.
Pursue discovering and owning our personal purpose in this life.
Increasingly utilizing each of these five keys is how we incorporate all the aspects of ourselves—good and difficult, light and shadow—into a cooperative process of becoming integrated people living the lives we were called to live.
Faith—same as recovery—is an ongoing process. It grows and changes.
If we’re followers of Jesus, the subject of our faith doesn’t change. But our understanding does.
What is the reality in your life which you’re avoiding? What do you need to face?tcr