Recently I have learned a new concept called Spiritual
bypass.
Definition: A spiritual bypass or spiritual bypassing
is
a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices
to sidestep or avoid
facing unresolved emotional
issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished
developmental tasks".
To me this means using something as a reason to avoid another
something.
I think that avoidance tactics are one of those things
that we tend to turn to in order to avoid something painful about ourselves
that we don’t want to face. Maybe that
is why it is so easy for us humans to come up with excuses and rationalizations.
One of the deciding factors in my healing journey was
facing my propensity for saying “yes but”.
I would face something that I knew I needed to change about my thinking
patterns or my behaviour patterns and then I would list all the reasons for not
changing.
Once I was aware that I was
doing it I started to see it in others around me as well. The most common turned to BUT is “but it is so hard”. Of course change is hard I want to shout,
that is why it is called change.
Naturally this rationalization itself is not so simple.
Difficult is the word that we turn to as a simple
explanation for the fear that we fear will be revealed in the process of
change.
For example; without change we can blame our
circumstances, other people, the actions of other people, the inactions of
other people, our history and essentially all the many details that go into
bringing us to this point in time with this problem that can only be resolved
through change.
However, when we do change we will have taken on responsibility
for ourselves. Then if we don’t like the
outcome we have no one to blame but ourselves.
It is no longer about the others it is about us. That is a huge amount of accountability to
take on. It makes us vulnerable while at
the same time making us authentic. This
is a scary place to be.
So just as in Spiritual bypass I think we need to become
aware of bypassing the changes we need to make, the avoidances that we allow to
continue become a sort of “life bypass”, where we are using engagement in our
life stories to bypass the changes of healing.
Under this kind of
avoidance we can look at things like this:
- Where there is a propensity to focus on the mistakes of others there is the need to protect or preserve the ego from facing our own wrongful actions. Is this where the refusal to apologize for comes from? When only others do wrong, that means we do only right ergo, no need to apologize.
- What about the situation where one deflects away from a criticism by introducing a lining up of faults in the other person. In this case there is an avoidance of having to take ownership for the wrongdoing that we committed that leads to a domino effect of other actions. If we get far enough down the line of dominoes maybe everyone will forget the hurtful action that precipitated the cascade event in the first place.
- What about when an error is pointed out, or an action is exposed as having caused harm and the first response to this is the casting of a judgement upon the person calling attention to the fault? In this case judging is used as an avoidance tactic for not having to take ownership of the error or harm causing action.
In all of these instances (and I am sure there are more
of them that abound in our relationships) there is a bypassing happening. There is this assumption that if we can
deflect away from introspection we can just live life without having to face
the difficulty of accountability.
I am sure some of us bypass introspection more than
others. Possibly also there might be
some times in our lives when we do more bypassing than at others. Maybe difficult times in our lives bring out
a greater desire to bypass?
In observing people I have noticed people tend to bypass
when an event makes them see something in themselves that they don’t want to
see, or when on some level they understand that they need to face something
that they don’t want to face.
However I have also noticed that some people make a habit of bypassing. I call this the “nothing is ever my fault syndrome” there is always someone or something or some event to blame.
I think that what I have become aware of is that there
are two kinds of bypassing.
- In the first there is only harm to the self, in that avoiding deflects and side tracks personal emotional healing.
- In the second there is the causing of harm to others because bypassing allows actions and inappropriate behaviours by the activation of a supply of plausible excuses or rationalizations.
Harming others through bypassing behaviour is something
that I see quite often. One very common
use is name calling and put downs in response to anything that seems to harm
their ego. This is often seen in
bullying behaviours. When I have questioned such actions, I
have received comments like; “this is my coping technique for dealing with my
pain”.
This leaves me to ponder;
- Do people really believe that they can bypass their wrong doings and their hurtful actions by blaming that “their past made them do it?”
- Do they really feel that they have the right to be mean because it is the “protective response to past injuries”
- Do they feel entitled to bypass their own healing while at the same time expecting others to make allowances for them because they carry emotional wounds?
Considering that almost every human carries woundedness
from their past this does not seem to be an especially appropriate kind of
behaviour. Because we were harmed or
hurt in some way by our past does not give one licence to behave hurtfully in
the present. This is especially the case
in our present day awareness that we; if we really wanted to, can change our
ways by learning to deal with and heal our emotional wounds.
It is at times like this where my reflections on life
leave me in a quandary. On the one hand I can see the results of such
behaviours; I can see the hurting on both sides. I can see the hurting of all the people who
are all really trying to find relief from the pain of life. I can even understand the motivation to protect
by deflecting outward. What I can’t
understand is the kind of character that a person must have to live at peace
with themselves knowing that they are hurting others to assuage their own pain.
Renate Dundys Marrello
2017 – 11 – 11
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