Save your Ass, Don't Spiritual Bypass
A short but thought provoking read in 4 minutes or less.
You’re welcome. ❤️
Alright so Spiritual bypass: A term I recently became familiar with.
And HONEY LET ME TELL YOU: This puts a name to the EXACT thing I have been wanting to help my future clients avoid!
Ok, sooo spiritual bypassing is using spiritual practices like prayer or meditation or whatever else you find spiritual, to avoid fixing maladaptive parts of yourself.
Let’s say you are hella controlling — I’ve been there, I’m part of this subgroup too.
If you develop a habit of meditation to help soothe controlling urges but you don’t actually get down to the bottom of why you’re hella controlling, you done did fucked up.
Spirituality is meant to help with EXPANSION and feeling ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE and you sure as hell are NOT going to feel one with anything if you haven’t even done the work to become one within yourself.
There are ways to use spirituality to actually HEAL your wounds, not just say that “God’s got it handled” and not actually do anything to help yourself.
Maybe reading some of the following might resonate to help you think about this question:
In what way does your spirituality actually help you heal and not just avoid your own issues?
One big way I use spirituality to heal is through Internal Family systems (IFS), which I ABSOLUTELY 100% recommend you check out.
It merges spirituality and psychology beautifully into a LIFE- CHANGING tool that you can use through every situation.
But using this method, you are legit meeting and integrating parts of yourself, and man has it changed the way I interact with myself.
Other methods of spirituality that I use to heal are visualization: I use visualization to confront challenging memories, images, thoughts, and emotions, in order to develop a new relationship with them.
I also use prayer, but not in the same way you’re probably thinking: I don’t get on my knees and pray the gray away.
I have conversations with my spirit team while driving, as usually I am in flow, and I talk about my issues out loud, honestly and openly. It is healing and talking it out allows me to work it out. Plain and simple.
If you feel yourself being drawn to the spiritual side, don’t forget that there is still work to do on yourself that needs your ACTIVE PARTICIPATION.
Let’s all aim to be intentional with the things we spend time doing, as EVERYTHING could be a spiritual practice if we allow it, even talking to ourselves in a car.
Developing spirituality is beautiful. But we also have to be accountable to not just do something because it seems good, but also because it helps us be better humans. ❤️