Spiritual Bypassing and how to avoid it
- Laura Schwartz
- Nov 29
- 4 min read
In the world of healing, spiritual growth, and conscious evolution, we often hear about “staying positive,” “choosing higher vibrations,” or “letting the past go.” These intentions can be powerful but when used to avoid facing pain, trauma, or uncomfortable emotions, they can actually block growth rather than support it.
This is where spiritual bypassing comes in.
As an quantum energy healer, medium, and personal development coach, I have gone through my own healing and transformation of underlying core wounds and have released heavy emotional baggage from the past. I’ve witnessed countless individuals who deeply desire happiness, and good health and also want to release baggage but they unintentionally bypass the very experiences that would set them free. Healing does not happen by suppressing what hurts. It happens by gently turning toward it, acknowledging with compassion and curiosity.
Let’s explore what spiritual bypassing is, how to recognize it, and how to heal in a grounded, embodied way that reveals your most authentic, whole, integrated self.
What is Spiritual Bypassing?
Spiritual bypassing is the tendency to use spiritual ideas, practices, or beliefs to avoid dealing with unresolved emotional wounds, discomfort, trauma, or shadow aspects of self. Instead of processing emotions, we jump to forgiveness, positivity, or transcendence, hoping to escape the pain rather than move through it.
It’s not that positivity or spiritual practice doesn't have its place. They become misaligned when they replace emotional acknowledgement rather than accompany it.
Healing and consciousness require integration, not escape.
Common Signs of Spiritual Bypassing
You may be spiritually bypassing if you recognize any of the following patterns:
1. “Love and light only” mindset
Avoiding sadness, anger, or grief because they feel low-vibration or uncomfortable.
2. Premature forgiveness
Forgiving someone before acknowledging the depth of the pain.
3. Intellectualizing emotions
Explaining trauma spiritually (e.g., “It was meant to happen for my growth”) instead of feeling it.
4. Over-focusing on the positive
Using affirmations or mantras to drown out inner wounds rather than face them.
5. Avoidance masked as acceptance
Convincing yourself you are “above” an experience, when really it still hurts.
Bypassing often looks peaceful from the outside, but inside, the body still holds the memories, sensations, and emotions waiting to be heard.
Why Spiritual Bypassing Blocks Healing
When we suppress anger, sadness, fear, or grief, it doesn’t disappear, it buries itself into the nervous system, into the subconscious, into the energetic body. The Law of Perpetual Transmutation of Energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, simply transformed. So this means that the energy of unprocessed, unreleased emotions goes somewhere in the body until they are healed, released and transformed to a different vibrational state.
Unfelt emotions become stored emotion. Stored emotion becomes tension. Tension becomes symptoms, emotional, physical, or spiritual.
Healing invites us to meet what is uncomfortable.
Not to relive it endlessly, but to witness it, feel it, and release it consciously.
When we allow emotion to move, we return to truth.
We return to authenticity.
We return to ourselves.
Healing is Not Linear. It is Cyclical, Spiraled, Layered
True healing is not one breakthrough, one ceremony, one meditation, one journal entry. It comes in waves. It circles back. It deepens. Old wounds may resurface because you are ready to meet them with more capacity, more love, more presence.
There is no finish line to healing. There is only unfolding, and that unfolding is sacred.
Powerful Exercises to Gently Bring Suppressed Emotions to the Surface
These questions and practices are designed to support emotional acknowledgement rather than avoidance. Choose one per day or move through them slowly, consciously.
1. Somatic Check-In
Close your eyes. Breathe deep. Scan your body.
Ask yourself:
What sensation am I feeling in my body right now?
Does this sensation have a temperature? Shape? Texture?
If it could speak, what would it say?
What emotion might this sensation carry?
Sensations often reveal the emotion before the mind does.
2. Truth Journal Prompt
Write freely without filtering or “being spiritual.” Be honest. Raw. Human.
Questions to explore:
What am I avoiding feeling right now?
Where am I pretending I’m “okay” when I’m not?
What would happen if I told the truth about how I really feel?
Truth is a doorway, tenderness is what walks you through.
3. Dialogue With the Emotion
Imagine the emotion is a part of you asking for attention.
Ask:
Why are you here?
What do you need?
How long have you been carrying this?
What do you want me to know?
Allow the emotion to respond. You may hear words, feel a sensation, or see images.
4. Shadow Compassion Exercise
Not to fix, just to witness.
Place a hand on your heart or stomach.
Breathe into the emotion you’ve identified.
Whisper: “You are safe to be felt. I’m here now.”
This alone can release years of suppression.
You Don’t Heal By Rising Above, You Heal By Moving Through
Spirituality is not bypassing the human experience, it is integrating it.
Spirituality is embodying the full spectrum of you, your mind, body and soul.
Your tears are sacred.
Your anger is sacred.
Your grief, your longing, your fear are all sacred.
Not to be judged, but to be integrated.
Not to be escaped, but to be felt.
Your authenticity is waiting beneath what you’ve been avoiding.
When you meet yourself there, you become whole.
Alignment happens when all layers of mind, body and soul are acknowledged, held and supported. If you or anyone you knows needs support, join my community email for bi-monthly tips on integrating personal development and spiritual insights at lscoaching.net
Laura Rae
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