Unlocking the Inner You: The Dangers of Spiritual Bypassing

Imagine a big old house with a huge, dank dirt floor basement filled with stuff. Nobody’s been down there for decades, maybe centuries. No one knows what’s down there. It’s creepy and scary and when you were a kid you imagined all sorts of monsters, skeletons, dead bodies, and ghosts.

Now you’re an adult. You realize that old basement needs to be cleaned out. If you don’t, black mold and who knows what else grows and makes your sick. But it’s still frightening to think about going down there. Plus, it’s a daunting task. It’s easier to ignore it.

Our brains are remarkable things. They retain the memory of everything we’ve seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, experienced, or observed. That’s too much data, so much of it is coded in symbols and kept in the unconscious. We store it in the cellar.

Some of what’s there is positive. If, for example, we were raised being told we have no artistic talent, we are likely to discover artistic ability in the basement. Some of the stuff in the basement is negative – memories of abuse too painful to face, for example.

A psychiatrist once told me that there are some people who, because of their age or circumstances, simply have to be helped to keep the lid on tight – keep that cellar door tightly shut.

But there’s a huge problem with keeping the door shut. Just as an old musty basement becomes a breeding ground for toxic mold, mice, rats, and disease, so an unexplored unconscious mind is a breeding ground for all the symptoms of mental illness – anxiety, depression, panic, neuroses, psychoses, dysfunctional families, violent relationships, academic or vocational failure, and so on.

Defense mechanisms are ways we keep the door shut. They help us by keeping away things we can’t handle. In my view, God designed us so that we won’t become overwhelmed. Only what we can handle is allowed to surface.

At some point, however, those defense mechanisms do us more harm than good. They seal us off from who we are. The rats and mold multiply and fester. It’s time to open the door and descend the stairs.

One such defense mechanism common among people of faith is spiritual bypassing. The term was first coined in the early 1980s by transpersonal psychotherapist John Welwood in his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening.

Spiritual bypassing is using spirituality or religion to ignore what’s down in the cellar. The word of faith, prosperity gospel, name-it-and-claim-it, positive-thinking, and possibility-thinking movements are prime examples. What you say is what you get. With enough faith, you will always be healthy, wealthy, and void of problems. It’s also common among evangelicals and fundamentalists – “All I need is the Bible!”

Spiritual bypassing leads Christians to avoid mental health treatment, not trust physicians, latch on to conspiracy theories, and deny reality. Spiritual bypassing avoids the truth and reduces God to a celestial Santa Claus. The toxic stuff in our own basements gets projected onto others.

People using spiritual bypassing as a defense mechanism tend to dismiss the pain and suffering of others, refuse to have meaningful conversations, hang onto shallow theology, have a distorted view of God and themselves, and blindly follow charismatic leaders. And the rats reproduce; the mold grows.

What are the rats? The mold? Things like anxiety, codependency, disregard of personal responsibility, blind faith, shame, confusion, superficial relationships with God and others, and spiritual narcissism.

Spiritual narcissism is using spiritual practices to increase self-importance. Spiritual narcissists use spirituality to inflate themselves, while wielding it as a weapon to tear others down. Christian nationalism and the New Apostolic Reformation movement are filled with spiritual narcissists.

That same psychiatrist told me we need to help people find the courage to open the cellar door, walk down the rickety old wooden steps, and start the long process of carrying out whatever’s down there.

Some of what we’ll find will delight us – hey, I can sing! Wow, I never knew great uncle Rufus played the saxophone.

Some of it will make us sad or angry. We may face the long-ignored feelings of abuse or discover family secrets. That’s why we need help. That’s where counseling comes in.

That’s why we have therapists, counselors, spiritual directors, pastors, rabbis, imams, and chaplains. They accompany us, help us carry up the heavy boxes, and sort out the junk. They rejoice with us when we find a treasure. They weep with us when the contents of a particular box makes us sad; they listen nonjudgmentally when we experience rage.

The most recent stuff is the most accessible. The hurts, pains, secrets, and wounds of early childhood are stored way in the back. We have to unload the cellar in reverse order. It usually feels like a daunting task. It typically takes years. It is a process of discovering who God really is and who we really are. At times, it is painful. At times it is exhausting.

Oh, but it is so worth it. It results in freedom, health, being fully human and fully alive, at one with Creator and creation. Emptying and sweeping out the cellar makes room to fill it with love, grace, and peace.

You can do it. Find a wise companion and crack open that old door. In the long run, you and those you love will be so glad you did.