Spirituality has become more popular in recent years. Apps for meditation, journals for manifestation, trends around mindfulness have made age-old practices part of the daily routine. There is a shadow side that comes with this bubbling up of spiritual awareness — something few discuss, yet almost all engage in to some extent.
That shadow has a name: spiritual bypassing.
A term used by psychotherapist John Welwood, spiritual bypassing is the use of spiritual beliefs or meditations to avoid dealing with, or even recognizing, unprocessed emotional pain, psychological issues, and uncomfortable truths.
In other words, it’s when someone tits around with spirituality, rather than evolve.
We’re here to help destroy what spiritual bypassing looks like, why it’s problematic (even though it seems good) and how you can recognize and overcome it in yourself and others. If you’re serious about scaling — you can’t ignore this.
What Is Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing occurs when individuals:
Use spiritual concepts to bypass painful emotions, which are feeling anger, sorrow, or shame
Practice meditation or affirmations to deny or escape – instead of feeling – pain
Take refuge in mindsets that dismiss other people’s suffering (“everything happens for a reason”)
Cling to “love and light” at the expense of recognizing their shadow or trauma
It may appear to be peace. But beneath it there’s avoidance — an unwillingness to step into the full dynamics of human experience.
Welwood called this “premature transcendence” — when people attempt to transcend their humanity before they have truly faced and come to terms with it.
Common Signs of Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing isn’t always obvious — in fact, it can even be easily concealed in what may even look like “high-vibe” language. Here are some warning signs you should watch for:
Suppressing Negative Emotions
Thinking that anger, sadness or fear are “low vibrational” and should be transcended. And rather than working through these emotions, you push them down, or call them bad.
Not to avoid conflict and call it peace
Instead of solving relationship problems, you detach or spiritualize your way out of them. “Everything is perfect” It’s a band-aid for: Not setting boundaries Not speaking your truth.
Overemphasis on Positivity
Using affirmations, manifestation or “good vibes only” culture as a way to avoid acknowledging real pain — your own or others’.
Judging those who are “Not spiritual…”
Believing you are more awake or evolved than others, due to your spiritual practice. This can be subtle egotism, where the subject is superior.
Bypassing Trauma with Phrases Like:
“It’s all a part of the divine plan.”
“You brought this into your space.”
“Just let it go.”
And though there may be universal spiritual truth in these sayings, when they are used glibly or out-of-sync with the nurturing principle, these are worn as shields instead of nurtured energy.
Using Spiritual Practice to Numb
Using meditation, yoga, plant medicine or retreats to bypass emotional pain rather than to go through it.
What Is So Bad About Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing can appear to be progress at first glance. You’re meditating. You’re speaking kindly. You’re choosing “light.” But below the veneer, real growth is stalling.
Here’s why it’s problematic:
It Delays True Healing
You can’t heal what you can’t feel. Repressing emotions or dodging trauma does not make them vanish — it merely shoves them further into your subconscious, where they quietly shape your actions, fears and relationships.
It Creates Inauthenticity
When you never even have the chance to be holier than you are without it, you are cut off from your true self — the sometimes raw, sometimes angry, sometimes confused, sometimes aching soul that you are. Real spirituality wants all of you, not just the parts that look good on Instagram.
It Undermines Empathy
If you’re always recontextualizing others’ pain with spiritual clichés, you may inadvertently be trivializing the pain. Genuine compassion makes space for suffering and does not avoid it.
It Reinforces the Ego
The spiritual ego can even be sneakier than the regular ego ironically. When we use our “spirituality” to feel better than others, be it as a control tactic, as an ego trip, or an image management strategy, the ego is still in the driving seat — it’s just got a new set of wheels and glittery crystals.
Spiritual Bypassing Prevention
Spiritual growth is not perfection. It’s about integration. It’s not about transcending your humanity — it’s about embracing it fully.
Here’s how to stay grounded and real on your spiritual journey:
Do Your Shadow Work
Shadow work is about facing the parts of yourself that you would rather not see — your fears, jealousy, shame, anger, old wounds. None of these features is “unspiritual.” They’re just human, and to challenge them is a mark of spiritual maturity.
Start by asking:
What triggers me deeply?
What do I condemn in others that may be alive in me?
What are the repeating patterns in my life?
Shadow work can be done through therapy, childhood trauma work, trauma-informed coaching, honest self-reflection.
Embrace Emotional Range
You were never supposed to be happy all the time. Emotions are messengers. Rather than classifying them as “good” or “bad,” work on sitting with them.
Let yourself cry. Get angry. Feel grief. Then feel it course through you. Your emotions are not obstacles to your growth — they’re the gateway to it.
Use Emotional Honesty With Spiritual Tools
Meditation, breathwork, prayer and affirmations are powerful — but only when used intentionally, not as a means of displacement.
Ask yourself:
Am I employing this practice to attune myself to myself — or to flee myself?
Is this tool helping me to go through the pain — or is it covering up pain?
Real healing is both spiritual and psychological.
Beware “Love and Light” Culture
Yes, love and light are real. But so is the shadow. So is injustice. So is trauma. A mature spiritual path integrates both of these.
Don’t rush to positivity. Remain in the pain until you know it. That’s where transformation takes place.
Stay Humble on the Path
You are not more evolved than someone else because you meditate or know what a natal chart is. True wisdom is humble. It speaks less and listens more. It views each person on their own sacred journey.
Check your ego often. Even your spiritual one.
Seek Safe Support
Sometimes you need a guide steeped in both psychology and spirit. Don’t shy away from working with therapists, coaches, or mentors who get trauma, emotions, embodiment — not just metaphysics.
Healing isn’t supposed to be done in isolation.
The Beauty Beyond the Bypass
Something potent happens when you stop using spirituality as a deflection and instead use it as a mirror.
You no longer need to “look spiritual,” and you start becoming deeply, radically real.
You no longer fear being human — because you understand that your humanity is exactly what your soul incarnated here to experience. That what triggers you is your teacher. That your scars can be turned into wisdom.
At its essence, spirituality is not about transcending the world. It’s showing up fully in it — heart open, eyes clear and soul in tact.
Final Thoughts
“Spiritual bypassing” is nothing to be guilty about. All of us do it at some point. It’s about realizing this and choosing a more integrative path.
Healing is not the result of floating above your pain. It’s moving” through life with presence, courage and love, he added.
So here’s your reminder:
You don’t have to be perfect to be a spiritual person.
You don’t have to be positive all the time to be “high vibe.” parties; — Tania Gabriource Gratuitousbush Manifesto531\nThe high vibe party is a paradox that has many intelligent organisms scratching their heads in wonder.
And you don’t have to flee your humanity to find your divinity.
In truth, your whole self —your mess, your emotion, your truth — is where the real magic lives.