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When Faith Goes Sideways: Understanding & Overcoming Spiritual Bypassing

• Tabitha • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Join licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook as she dives deep into the topic of spiritual bypassing—the often overlooked yet harmful practice of using religious or spiritual concepts to sidestep genuine emotional pain. In this enlightening episode of Hey Tabi, we’ll uncover:

  • What Spiritual Bypassing Is and why it undermines true healing
  • Common Signs of spiritual bypassing in faith communities
  • Negative Impacts on mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being
  • Practical Steps to acknowledge pain, foster authentic relationships, and pursue genuine healing

If you’ve ever felt dismissed by phrases like “just pray it away” or struggled to reconcile your faith with emotional challenges, this episode is for you. Discover healthy ways to navigate your mental health within a Christian faith framework—no quick fixes, just real talk about healing and hope.

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional therapy. If you need help, please reach out to a licensed therapist in your area.

Keywords: Spiritual Bypassing, Mental Health, Christian Faith, Trauma Therapy, Emotional Healing, Authentic Community, Coping with Pain, Religious Trauma, Faith and Wellness, Hey Tabi Podcast

#SpiritualBypassing #MentalHealth #ChristianFaith #TraumaTherapy #EmotionalHealing #HeyTabiPodcast

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Welcome to Hey Tabi, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning.
I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control, and how complex trauma impacts our health and well being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope.
Now, let's get going.
Hey there and welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby. I hope everybody is doing amazing and I'm super glad that you are joining me this week. This week we are going to tackle a pretty interesting topic I think and that is one of spiritual bypassing. This is a experience that many survivors have in various ways and in various settings. So we're going to talk about that and we're going to talk about all kinds of aspects of that today.  we are going to talk about what it is, how it happens, how it affects us, and also how do we even know that it's happening?what are the warning signs and then how do we heal from it? So we are going to talk about all of those things at length today together. So let's talk about the concept itself and talk about what it means to actually spiritually bypass. So what is the definition? So here's a super short one for you that I think will be helpful.
 it is using spiritual ideas or practices or scriptures to sidestep dealing with a painful feeling or experience, an underlying issue. Things that you often hear in spiritual bypassing are just pray more, fast more. God won't give you more than you can handle.
Just think happy thoughts. And also things like, well, you know, all things work together for good. That, It is part of that verse. It's not the full verse. And I refer to that verse as the throat punch verse, because when you use it at an inopportune and inappropriate time, that is what someone wants to do to you.
They want to punch you in the throat. Now I do not advocate throat punching at all, but It is such a minimization when those things are misused I can tell you that it's a common practice and that the survivors that I work with have experienced it extensively.So how do we get to spiritual bypassing? Sometimes I think that it does come from a well intended heart. And I know that if you've been harmed by it, it could not maybe feel like it was very well intended at all, but sometimes it really does come from a well meaning individual.it's an attempt to provide quick help right to say like, Hey, I see you're in pain.
Let me stick a bandaid on that. Let me get the peroxide out and it really isn't solving the issue at all, but the goal is to help you with your pain. Now, it doesn't actually help you with your pain. It actually usually makes it worse to be honest, but the hope I think is that it would help you with your pain in some way.
And give you like a quick hit of hope when you're not feeling very hopeful and sometimes, you know, it's really part of the cultural norm of the community that you're in where they are saying, you know, like, Hey, we are going to just move through it quickly. We're not going to sit in this at all. And so you got to just stay positive, right?Keep your chin up. We'll talk more about why in just a minute. Also. There is an idea in some faith communities that it is a lack of faith. So if you were struggling with something or something bad has happened, then there is a misunderstanding that you just don't have enough faith, 
You would not be feeling this way if you just had more faith and that leads to people feeling like, man, I just got to look like I have it all together because I'm the only person here struggling with this thing. And man, that really stinks and all that. And social and cultural pressure in some places to just shut it down, shut down the feelings.
We're not going to have feelings. And that's really one of the things that spiritual bypassing does is it smushes away, if you will, anything that is a negative feeling for somebody, anything that is a big feeling sometimes for people, it just kind of gets rid of it and makes it as if it doesn't exist.And a way to kind of do an end around so that you don't have to actually deal with a thing. So now that we know what spiritual bypassing is and how it often happens, let's talk about how it doesn't help. It's actually really harmful. It's a very harmful thing to do because it is such a minimizer. So for individuals in general, it really minimizes real emotional pain.

If you've really experienced a loss, a betrayal, some sort of harm, the emotional pain and honestly physical pain that comes with the emotional pain, because again, we are whole people, is really awful. It's a really terrible thing. and we don't want to minimize that. And when we really do minimize pain, when we do say,  just nothing to worry about or pull up your bootstraps or whatever it is, however it is that you're being minimized and spiritually bypassed, it really actually gets in the way of healing.It gets in the way of processing it because. Our emotions need to be felt. Now, we do not want to just go emote all over everybody, and sometimes emotions, we really need to check in with them. They're more of a check engine light, and we should ask some questions, but when we've been hurt, when we've been betrayed, when bad things have happened, We do need to feel it, and we need to process it, because if we don't, then it's going to just sit in there.
And I refer to stuffing emotions down like Ghostbusters, 1980s version. None of the rest of them count, in my opinion. You may feel differently, but here we are. And if you stuff them into your containment unit, at some point, the power grid on that is going to fail, and everything is coming out, and everybody's getting slimed, including you.
And when we minimize and spiritually bypass emotions for people, then we are not letting them heal. And it also makes people feel shameful when you are saying, well, you should be past this by now, or, you know, God doesn't give you more than you can handle. Like the impetus there, what you're saying to this person is you aren't doing this right.
And I'm going to give you a secret here, there isn't a right when it comes to processing,everybody has a different process for stuff. Everybody has a different rhythm for dealing with loss or harm and grief. And sometimes it happens in layers. So there's not like a timeline. So when we're telling someone flip your bootstraps, you're not allowed to cry. I'll give you something to cry about. Oh, that's another one I hear.
 so we just need to be cheerful first time right away with a happy heart, you know, that kind of thing. Then we're really steeping someone in a teacup of shame,  and keeping the healing from taking place, which means it's just going to be harder later. From a relational perspective it also creates distance. You can't be honest with somebody if they've spiritually bypassed you, you're not going to tell them stuff. You're going to be like, yep, I'm good. We're good. Everything's great. Hey, brother. Hallelujah. I'm, I'm great. And that's because,  you can't really connect when you can't be authentic.Authenticity is such an important healing salve for people to be able to say, I am really sad because of this big loss, or I am so deeply hurt and grieved because of this betrayal. Even if it's months down the line is really important to be able to do. But when you know that someone's going to just say, but that's not the case. Whatever it is that they say to you, like, Oh my goodness, like didn't the Lord heal you already? Well, like, I mean, maybe not, maybe, maybe healing takes time.
It really kind of pulls you away because you can't be real. And also really leads to superficial community. I don't know if you've ever been in a Bible study that is not particularly real. I don't go to a lot of them because then I ended up being real and people are super uncomfortable because I am just gonna say the thing.But if you've ever been in a Bible study where it is just surface level and everybody's like, you know, could you play, pray for my aunt Sally? Aunt Sally is having trouble  with her canning jars sealing properly and all of that. And  if that's the nature of the prayer request and like no shade, if you want to pray about your canning jar sealing accurately and well, and all of that, no one likes botulism.
Botulism is not fun. However, if that's the sum total of the depth of what you're getting in these groups, you're not gonna say, you know what, I have a prodigal child who's really going through it. You are not going to say, I am in a marriage that is harmful and destructive. You're not gonna say that.
You're not gonna say I am struggling with addiction. I'm struggling with reading erotic fiction. You are not gonna be real and it's a superficial sense of community. We got to be in the depths together. And  no, one's going to really know you. And we really do want to be known.You know, those are the places where we can say, Oh yes, I have had that feeling. I've had that feeling of being underwater and feeling like I'm drowning and having all of these tears. And I don't think I'm going to stop crying. You know, and the anger when, like, oh my gosh, I have betrayal. You were my friend.
You said you were my friend and you betrayed me. You are not supposed to be a betrayer of me. All of these things are things that when we allow ourselves to be real and raw can resolve, can heal, we can grow. But when we are spiritually bypassed and told All things work together for good. Yes, I know you lost your child.
I know it's a horrific, horrific loss, but you know what? God probably just needed another angel in heaven. Oh my goodness. Like, I can't even say that out loud without being mad at the example I just gave. Oh my gosh. And it's a terrible, terrible space. And truly one other reason that folks spiritually bypass isn't necessarily just a quick fix for you.It's a quick fix for them. When you are spiritually bypassed, it's because somebody doesn't know what to do with the pain. And it's like, Hey, I'm going to say this and then I'm going to go run away because I don't know what to do with any of this. And so it's really almost a self preservation for their inability to deal with pain and harm and loss and big feelings.
We also sometimes spiritually bypass ourselves. Either we don't want to deal with the pain or we have been so talked into believing that we aren't even allowed to have any That we are just gonna, you know, absolutely say to ourselves if I read the Bible and if I'm gonna be fine I just need to read more, pray more, right?
All of these things like if I just do more Then this pain, this situation, this difficulty, this loss won't be here. And that doesn't work that way, but it's almost as if we have to blame ourselves for the situation because we don't know what else to do with it. And it really is a place where we are afraid in some spaces.we talked about,  the community organizations, churches, all those structures that maybe don't allow us to be super real because they're like, you know, say hallelujah brother and move on. But. We are afraid that if we are really real, we're going to be labeled as unfaithful or not trusting God enough or any of these things.
And so we don't want to lose our community. And so we just hide it. And we say, no, it's not really happening. I'm fine. I'm fine. When, you know, You're not, you're not fine, actually, at all.  I had a therapist once tell me that fine is the worst four letter word in the English language, and I would agree, actually, on that.
How do you know that you're getting bypassed? And this can be so tricky. First, I'll tell you the body keeps the score,  You can feel it in your body when you have been bypassed. When you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I feel minimized. I don't feel like that. Didn't feel good. That, that wasn't good.
Right. And you'd be like, well, it was a scripture and I definitely heard a scripture, but it wasn't good. So that is kind of your first, your body's going to go, Oh, what? It does. That's not great. You're going to notice that you are shoving down your emotions when you're with the person that bypasses you and say, you know, I'm great.I'm totally fine. Knowing you're not totally fine at all. And  they might even say like, gosh, I feel. Distance in this relationship. What's going on? You're like, I don't know. Everything's fine.  you might find it also really hard to ask for help because it doesn't feel safe. I think we've talked about it before, but if we haven't, we have a neuroceptive system,  neuroception is the concept that we are always scanning for threats using the five senses that God gave us. And if we know that someone has bypassed us before, and they don't feel like a safe person, then we are going to have a really hard time saying that we need help or admitting that we struggle.
And we also are going to  hyper spiritualize things. We're going to overuse spiritual language in order to explain away life issues and not talk about them because we know they're not wanted. And so we're going to hide inside ourselves. We see it in communities where we're like, Ooh, this is happening here.When we know that others pain is dismissed very quickly. And there's like a quick fix spiritual solution. Oh, we'll read more. Or, you know, maybe you need to fast or have you been in the word lately?  How, how are you doing in your Bible? And look no shade to spiritual disciplines. They are wonderful. And I love them, but they are not only sometimes we need to talk about the things that have happened. Sometimes we need a little support and things that are happening,  a whole set of things I call the non casserole,  So when an abusive spouse leaves, nobody brings you a casserole. Nobody sees it as a death.
Some people are like, do you want cake? Or they just ignore you altogether. Instead of saying, I know you've got to be grieving. This could not have been easy. Here's some tater tots and ground beef and cheese and whatever is in a casserole or hot dish, depending on where you're from. So, you know, those things like you just get missed because everything's a quick fix.
And there's so much pressure to move on from trauma without it being healed. Like just move on. Like, I mean, I know they really hurt you, but you just move on. And again, this is different than holding onto bitterness or a grudge. This is really not letting you even feel it. This is like, Oh no, no, no.Everything's fine. We're good. You, you can go now, right? It's very dismissive and you feel that dismissiveness.
How do we heal? If you're like, oh, gosh, not only have I been spiritually bypassed in my community or by an abusive individual, but  I have spiritually bypassed myself. That can be really, really hard. So, first of all. Look, man, we do these things because we're trying to figure it out sometimes. So when we're spiritually bypassing ourselves, again, it's what we know.
We don't know what to do with that. And so I'm just going to invite you first and foremost into kindness toward yourself. And if you're noticing that this is part of your story, I just want you to be very gentle and kind to you. And then you can gently and invitationally integrate spiritual practices that feel good to you.
And I know if you've been deeply harmed, this may not feel good to you and that's okay. And,  if prayer, if meditation, if sitting with the word is helpful, I am a big fan of lamentations when we are sad, then that is something that you can engage in. Also, getting therapeutic support, or a support group, or even inviting a friend into hearing about it.A safe friend, not the one that bypassed you necessarily. You can be a woman or man of incredible faith. And also struggle with big feelings and have big experiences of feelings after something really difficult. That doesn't mean that you're not faithful.
It means that you're human. You can also talk to folks about it and say, Hey, I really felt missed there. When you said all things work together for good to those that love the Lord. After I told you that I was diagnosed with cancer, I really feel like what I needed you to do was sit with me and say, I am so sorry.
And give me a hug. And not try to fix it. That's what I needed. All right, so you can always say what you need. And I think this is a thing I see a lot where folks are like, I am not saying what I need, but you are welcome to do that. Now, how people might receive it in some communities, it could be hard, but also you are allowed to say it.
And I think that's a very important thing to remember. We may sometimes say things, even if we know the outcome isn't going to go well, because it was still the right and good thing to say.Also, as you are looking at the emotions and all these things and not bypassing yourselves, you can really have some honest self evaluation and really embrace that lament and that grief and wrestling with God. And that is actually part of a very vibrant and strong faith journey. If you know someone who has been very authentic in their older,  go chat with them.
But is it, how has lament helped you? How has grief helped you? How's wrestling with God and wrestling with things of the faith?
So in short, we really also want to set expectations for healing. It is a process. It's not going to happen overnight. A single prayer, a single conversation doesn't fix most things. So be patient with you. Hey, it's going to take a minute to heal and it definitely doesn't go as fast as we would like. So we don't want to let anyone else spiritually bypass us.
And we don't want to do it to ourselves either. Again, it's okay to struggle and need help. You are human. We are all going to have those seasons. We're going to have seasons where we just need more help than other seasons. And that's all right in your faith community. Look around who seems to be able to understand.the complexities of the pain and the difficulty and all those things and isn't take two verses and call me in the morning, go talk to that person. So I've got a couple of reflective questions for you to kind of just sit with marinate with as you kind of figure out like, where am I here?
Where am I? Are you avoiding hard emotions with spiritual language, either for yourself or for someone else? Have you ever said, well, it could be worse. And of course it could be worse. Lots of things can be worse just because you have a a broken arm doesn't mean that your broken leg doesn't hurt.
So we want to be mindful of that. We don't have to avoid it. And God can handle all of it. Do I feel shame for experiencing pain or difficulty? If you do ask yourself, why, where are you being bypassed? Is it in your community? Is it by a friend? Is it by yourself? Be curious about the shame? Chuck DeGroat talks about befriending our shame.
I'm a big fan of that. Be curious. Do you have safe spaces in your Therapeutics relationship, community, something else, where you can bring big emotions too? That's an important piece is to build out that community, to find your safety.So, we've talked a little bit today, about what spiritual bypassing is, and how we see it, and how to identify it.  and so I'm really looking at, like, how do I receive this from others and maybe even how am I doing it to myself? And truly, I think a lot of times when we as survivors get out of a difficult situation, we do find ourselves spiritually bypassing our own selves.
Because we are so used to that being a thing that we just go do that thing that we know. So if you notice yourself. I'm going to be talking about spiritually bypassing your own self. Just notice it without judgment and be curious as to what are you trying to avoid? I want to thank you so much for listening this week.
I hope that it was helpful. I hope the topic of spiritual bypassing is useful and you learned a couple of things. Really appreciate you listening to Hey Tabi. Please feel free to like, subscribe and follow on all the platforms, especially Apple podcasts because it does help people find us. And with that, I will see you next week.Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabi. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to Tabitha Westbrook. com forward slash Hey Tabi. That's H E Y T A B I. And you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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