Navigating Spiritual Bypassing: A Guide for Highly Sensitive and Introverted Christian Women in Hard Times

Spiritual bypassing is a serious problem in Christianity especially when you are walking through hard times.

I’ve noticed something inside Christian communities, especially when people are dealing with hard times.  I have experienced it personally but didn’t have the words to identify what it was or fully understand what was going on. 

It’s something that I feel is so important to talk about and discuss because this thing is hurting so many people. It’s causing a lot of mental anguish, emotional anguish, and spiritual anguish. When you are already walking through something hard, the last thing you need is something to add to your problems. 

What am I talking about? Spiritual bypassing. We will examine how it can help manage emotions during hard times. Today, I want to cover some of the basics of spiritual bypassing: what it is, how to recognize it, why it’s harmful, and what you can do to overcome it.

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My Spiritual Bypassing Story

Before we dive into our topic today, I want to briefly summarize my journey. I grew up in the church. I can’t remember a time in my life when I was not in church. Anytime anybody had a problem, the answer was always something to do with church or your faith. 

Are you struggling with your finances? All you need to do is dig into scripture to find out what God says about money and pray right. This became the trend that I noticed. It seemed like the answer to every problem that anybody ever faced was to do more Christian things: go to church, serve, fast, pray, study, memorize God’s word, etc.

That was fine when I was younger and growing up. But when I started going through my own hard times, I became increasingly frustrated by those answers because they weren’t actually helping me.

Now, hear me. I am not saying that digging into your faith and drawing closer to God is something that you shouldn’t do when times are hard. You absolutely should do that, but what I have noticed is that we tend to elevate spiritual things as the end-all-be-all solutions to all things. 

Here’s a little soundbite for you: Faith alone is for salvation, not for managing all the things that go along with being a human being on planet Earth.

You cannot rely on just your faith alone to manage things because you are a complex being. You are not just spirit or soul, you have emotions,  thoughts, and a body. When you pin everything on being a better Christian or doing more Christian things, you are leaving out so many important parts of who God has created you to be.

I got to a point where I was like, Lord, I’m doing all the things I pray, fast, study my word, I go to church, and I’m serving. I’m doing all the things that a  “good Christian” should do, and I am not feeling any better. 

My life is still hard. I’m still struggling with depression, still battling anxiety, still really angry, and still in despair. All of these answers I have been given my whole life are not working. I had to face this hard truth. 

Either something was wrong with me, and I was never going to be able to do the things right enough to get the relief and the peace that I was looking for, or other stuff wasn’t the answer. I landed on that wasn’t the answer. 

My faith alone was not enough to see me through all of the hard things that were going on in my life. I needed more. I needed to take care of my physical body. I needed to sleep,  eat well,  drink water, and exercise. I needed help with my mental well-being.  

I needed to get counseling and meds for a while. I needed to address my whole self if I was going to be able to cope with life and find the peace that I knew that God had for me and that I wanted.

Defining Spiritual Bypassing

That brings us to our topic today, which is taking a look at spiritual bypassing. If you know me, you know I like words and I like to start with definitions. So here we go. In the 1980s, a man named John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist kind of coined the term spiritual bypassing, and here’s what he says it is: 

“The tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” 

The thing to understand about spiritual bypassing is that it’s not a Christian-specific thing.  When John came up with this term, he was not looking at the Christian faith and saying it was a Christian thing. 

He is using the term for any kind of faith or spiritual practice across the board. But it is so relevant for Christians, today because it talks about my experience (and others). That tendency to use my faith and practices to avoid getting to the root of what was actually wrong. 

I kept telling myself, I’m depressed, I’ll just pray.  I’m super anxious, I’ll just read my bible. I’m in adrenal fatigue, I just need to pray and fast. I was convinced I needed to do all these things instead of doing the work of getting to the root of what my actual problems were so I could learn to cope and manage my emotions well so I could live the abundant life that God called me to.

Examples of Spiritual Bypassing

I hope you’re following but if you’re still not sure here are some examples that I have experienced in my walk with God that are clearly spiritual bypassing.

Denial of Negative Emotions

Anytime I tried to express what I was really feeling inside — the anguish that I was going through or the emotional struggles I had — I was accused of not having enough faith. I was told that if I had faith,  believed in God, and was really a “good Christian” I wouldn’t be angry. I wouldn’t struggle with forgiveness, be afraid, worry, have doubts, or be depressed. Because that’s just not what Christians do. 

Pushed to Forgive

I was always pushed to just forgive automatically. Never encouraged to sit and think and go through the process of forgiving that actually works and helps. It was just, “The Bible says forgive so forgive!” That was it, without ever addressing anything that was going on.

Overemphasis on Being Positive

There was also this overemphasis on being positive. If you even consider that something negative or bad can happen, that’s a lack of faith. “Where’s your faith? What do you mean if the worst happens? You have to think positive, God’s not going to allow that horrible thing to happen.”

There’s somehow this hierarchy of Christians and the people who wanted to express how they were feeling were looked down on by these other people who were “better Christians” because they didn’t seem to have those struggles.

All of this is damaging and harmful.  I’m not going to say that I believe that it’s being done intentionally. I don’t. The people in my life who were encouraging me to dig deeper into my faith, pray more, and read more believed that that was the answer.

They loved me and cared about me; that was just their answer because that’s what they knew. I don’t think that they were doing it intentionally to be spiritually abusive or harmful. We live in a society right now where mental health struggles seem to be everywhere you look, especially within the church. 

I do believe that a lot of it is because of the spiritual bypassing. Instead of actually dealing with things and being honest about struggles, you are trying to put band-aids on everything with your faith. 

As if you can just pray your way out of depression or bible study your way out of feeling anxious. You can’t, by the way, those things aren’t complete solutions.

Recognizing Spiritual Bypassing in Hard Times

How can you recognize if you are experiencing spiritual bypassing? I gave you some examples of what it looks like. But I want to help you understand what it looks like for you, especially as a highly sensitive person or an introverted woman who’s going through hard things. 

When you think about spiritual bypassing, think about feeling disconnected from your faith, disconnected from God, or experiencing some kind of emotion about not being christian enough. This will help you identify when you are experiencing spiritual bypassing. 

If  you are a highly sensitive person, introverted,  or have a strong gift of empathy like me you are probably very introspective. Always inward thinking, turning in to examine your thoughts and how you feel. 

During hard times, you are overwhelmed by that sensitivity to emotions and want a quick answer to make that go away. You need to feel better right now. What’s a good answer? A lot of times you turn to your faith for a quick fix.  

Doing that one Bible study about managing your emotions and everything will be fine. Going on a seven-day fast will make everything better. You’re looking for these quick fixes instead of taking the time to actually be uncomfortable, be overwhelmed, and ask God to help you work through that. You’re trying to avoid it. 

This often leads to what I experienced — a struggle or a crisis of faith and an inability to fully trust God. Why? Because you begin to question your beliefs and your faith because in your mind you believed the answer to your problems was all of these spiritual disciplines.

The answer is being a better Christian and diving deeper into your faith. Then you find yourself in the place that I was at where you’ve checked all those boxes and things are still awful. And you begin to question your faith. 

You wonder if God is really good.  If this is really what your faith is about? Are you just never going to be good enough? You begin to have all of these doubts because you’re not seeing what you think you should see based on the work that you’re doing.

Then you also begin to have this desire for comfort and certainty. You just want to feel better, be comforted, and I  know that the hard stuff will end soon. 

That’s what I wanted. 

We see that so many times in other people as well. Just wanting to feel better. To have something to hold onto, that’s certain and true and clear. We use our faith as a shield to comfort us. We don’t have to feel whatever we’re feeling because God is with us.

We use that as a shield to keep that emotion away, which isn’t scripture-based.  God does not say that he’s there to keep you from walking through hard times or keep you from experiencing pain. 

He says he’s there with you through all of that. But you will often use your faith as a shield and get into the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to do. You go and do all these faith-based things but it doesn’t work. 

Now you’re not sure about your faith and struggle to trust God.  You just want to feel better so you go back to all your faith things. You get stuck in this loop that doesn’t serve you well. It doesn’t help you heal. It doesn’t help you cope and you just spiral and spiral and spiral deep into this pit of despair.

Impact on Emotional Management and Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Bypassing has a huge impact on your life. I’m going to talk about two things here: your emotional health and your spiritual growth. Now it has other effects as well on your mental health and your physical body, but that’s out of the scope of my knowledge. Just know that it affects all parts of who you are.

Temporary Relief

When it comes to your emotions and your spiritual growth, the first problem is that whatever relief you experience, whatever comfort you experience, it’s temporary. If you get any relief at all. In the beginning, I would get temporary relief from what I was feeling, but it would always come right back and often it came back worse than it was before. 

When I eventually got to my breaking point, there was no relief at all. I just had a lot of unresolved trauma, unresolved issues, increased depression, and increased anxiety, and I felt like I was stuck in my faith. I wasn’t growing, I didn’t feel like I was getting any closer to God. 

I just felt like I was stuck in a rut. I was in a pit of despair and I was just stuck there like okay, now what? And this happens because of a few things.

Suppressing Your Emotions

One is you are suppressing your emotions. This idea that it’s somehow a sign of a lack of faith or a lack of spiritual maturity if you have any kind of emotion that’s not happy all the time. So you start to push those emotions down. Denying what you’re actually feeling and what you’re actually experiencing. 

You walk around with this mask on saying everything’s great. When someone asks how are you doing you reply, “Oh, I’m blessed and highly favored. I’m a child of God. I’m doing great. God is good all the time and all the time God is good.” 

Okay, that’s true, but how are you actually feeling? We don’t go there and when we do that we set ourselves up to have a lot of issues down the line. No matter how much you want to ignore, avoid, or suppress those emotions they’re not going anywhere.

At some point, you’re going to have to face those things. The longer that you put it off, the more difficult it becomes and the more negative consequences you’re going to experience. You’re also going to feel stuck in your spiritual growth. You’re going to stop growing because authentic, true, intimate, relational spiritual growth requires you to be your true self. 

To show up to God with everything that you are, the good, the bad, the ugly, and in between. Your mistakes, your flaws, your strengths, your pain, your doubt, your questions right, your joy, whatever it is. 

You’re supposed to bring all of that to God and show up as your true because if you’re not being true and authentic to who you are, you’re not going to have a relationship. You have to be who you are. You cannot be hiding or lying or any of that. 

Be the raw, real you. That’s how you develop deep, close relationships. The same thing goes with God. If you are showing up with your “good Christian” face on, you’re not actually growing. You’re not actually experiencing intimacy and closeness with God. 

I hear from women all the time who just want to be closer to God. Well, you cannot do that if you’re not being real and honest with God and yourself about who you are, where you are, and what you’re dealing with.

Alienation from God and Community

The final thing that I want to share is that you often experience alienation from God and your church family or community.  Remember I talked about how I was doing all the things and at some point, I was like this isn’t working.

The temptation there is to say you know what, forget it all. I’ve prayed, I read my Bible, I’ve served, and if life is going to be this terrible no matter what I do, I’m just not going to do anything. I quit, I’m not going to pray, I’m not going to read my Bible, I’m not going to church, I’m not going to give, and I’m not going to serve. 

I’m not doing anything because I did all of that and it got me nowhere. So what’s the point? Then you distance yourself from God, you distance yourself from your church family, and you lose your support system. 

Now you’re isolated, alone, angry and you haven’t actually done anything that’s going to help or support you. You’re just going to be alone, more depressed, more anxious, and more worried. Everything that you’re feeling is going to get that much worse because you have disconnected yourself from God, who is there to help you through it all. 

And from your community,  who are there to help lift you up and pray for you, care for you, and do all the things to support you on your journey. You have removed yourself from the ability of people to do that.

Overcoming Spiritual Bypassing

It is possible to overcome spiritual bypassing and the effects of spiritual bypassing. 

Emotional Awareness

The very first thing is emotional awareness. What I mean is you need to work on and develop the skill of being honest about your emotions — how you actually feel. If you’re like you know what, everything sucks. I don’t think anything’s going well, I’m having a bad day. 

Own it and be honest about it. You’ve got to be aware of how you’re actually feeling. Be aware of what you’re actually doing and when you’re experiencing spiritual bypassing, either self-imposed or from some external source. Be aware of that. 

You cannot deal with, process, and move on from things that you do not identify or that you’re not aware of.

Embrace Vulnerability 

I also want you to embrace vulnerability. I know some of you probably just were like, eh, what’d she say? Yes, be vulnerable. It goes back to being authentic, open, honest, true, and real. That’s vulnerability. 

You cannot heal if you are not vulnerable. You cannot have close relationships if you are not vulnerable. You’ve got to create a safe place with your safe people and with just you and God, and just bear it all.  

Then, you can heal. You can process it, work on it, and develop healthy techniques and healthy coping mechanisms so that when life gets hard, you have things in place that are going to allow you to walk through that.

Mindfulness

Practicing mindfulness is also helpful for this. I’m not trying to get all woo on you. Mindfulness is just the ability to be present with whatever you are currently experiencing. 

If you are having a really rough day, just be present. Be present and be in that moment instead of trying to escape into the next Bible study or the next serving opportunity.  Or this ideal fantasy life that you have in your mind that’s so much better than what you’re actually dealing with. 

You’ve got to learn how to accept where you are. That contentment that Paul talks about, because this is going to help you develop and build resilience so that you are able to bounce back and come back from hard things better and faster.

Because you’ll be comfortable with just being present, no matter how uncomfortable that may feel. You’ve got to remember that you are a complex person and you’ve got to do things that treat your whole personhood, not just your spiritual side. 

Take care of your physical body. Work on your mental health, deal with your mind. You’ve got to incorporate all of these aspects of yourself if you want to see growth, be able to manage things, and cope well.

Authentic Faith

The final thing that I want to encourage you to do is to run after authentic faith. I love God, but before I realized what was happening with spiritual bypassing, my faith was lacking. 

It wasn’t until I realized that I was doing things that were causing me to doubt, causing me not to trust, or truly find intimacy with God.  Once all of that fake crap was out of the way I wasn’t pretending. 

I was not allowing myself to feel judged or guilty or shamed, because I was depressed, needed medication, and needed to go to counseling. I didn’t let any of that stuff affect me and I showed up raw and ugly and crying and, however broken I felt.

I just showed up as my true self and I was okay with that. Every time I did, God was there. Every time I went to a counseling session, I got a little bit better. I picked up a new skill that I could use to cope with things. 

I learned more about myself and now I’m at the point where my life is still difficult, but I have so much control over my emotional responses and my thoughts. I recognize when I’m beginning to feel anxious and I know what to do about it. 

I have things that I can do that address my entire being. I have things that I can do for my faith, take care of my physical body, take care of my mental well-being, and deal with my emotions. I have things that I can do that address all parts of who I am so that I don’t end up in despair every time I start to feel one of these big or overwhelming or negative emotions.

I can control my mind. I don’t have to allow my mind to go on this doom spin of all of the worst things that could possibly happen. I can stop those thoughts and I can rein those in and I can focus on what is true. I can be present. 

I can learn how to relax and cope. I can show up for myself and I can show up for the people in my life that I’m responsible for. I can serve others. I can do all of these things because I have learned how to actually deal with my life. 

To deal with the things that are happening to me, instead of using my faith as this kind of band-aid or get-out-of-jail-free card to actually dealing with the hard things of life.  It is so much better on this side of that journey.

Other Helpful Resources:

• Too Overwhelmed to Pray? 5 Ways to Cope as an Overwhelmed Christian Empath
• Feeling Shut Down? The Key to Understanding and Overcoming Emotional Numbness
• 5 Ways to Grow Your Faith During Hard Times

If you’ve experienced spiritual bypassing it is possible to move past it and learn how to manage your emotions in a healthy way.