Understanding Spiritual Bypassing: When Faith Language Replaces Feeling and Processing of Emotion
- Kylie Walls
- Oct 29
- 6 min read
Faith can be a profound source of comfort, meaning, and strength. It can give language to hope when circumstances feel unbearable, and it can anchor a person through seasons of loss, confusion, and grief. Yet in some contexts, faith language is used to avoid emotional depth and feeling.
This pattern has a name: spiritual bypass.
Spiritual bypassing occurs when spiritual beliefs, scriptures, or practices are used to avoid, suppress, or bypass difficult emotions, relational pain, psychological wounds, or accountability. Instead of supporting emotional and relational growth, spirituality can become a shield — a way to stay away from what hurts, what’s unresolved, or what needs to be addressed.
Spiritual bypassing is very common in faith communities committed to compassion, hope, and meaning-making. But when faith replaces feeling — or is used to avoid feeling — suffering doesn’t disappear, it is simply suppressed, and "moves underground".
What is Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypass (Welwood, 1984) is:
Using spiritual words, practices, or beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, past wounds, relational conflict, or emotional needs.
Research describes spiritual bypass as a form of emotional and psychological avoidance that can appear healthy or devout on the surface — while causing disconnection from God and others on a deeper level. [1–4]
Examples of spiritual bypass include:
Using “God is in control” to avoid processing fear, grief, or loss.
Saying “I forgive them” before allowing time to feel anger or betrayal
Quoting Scripture to silence or deny emotional distress
Viewing emotional struggle as spiritual failure or satanic influence.
Avoiding seeking therapy for severe trauma or depression, and replacing with prayer because emotions feel threatening
How Spiritual Bypass Develops
Spiritual bypass is not usually intentional. Most people who engage in it genuinely believe they are responding in the most faithful or resilient way they can. However, research suggests that spiritual bypass often develops in the following contexts:
1. When Emotional Expression Was Discouraged Growing Up
If someone learned early that emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, or disappointment were “too much,” “sinful,” or “selfish,” they may have learned to push feelings down in order to stay connected or acceptable. Over time, the person becomes skilled at hiding internal experiences even from themselves. When spirituality later becomes part of their life, faith language can feel like a safe, familiar way to continue avoiding emotions without appearing to avoid them. In these situations, bypassing is a learned survival strategy that once helped protect connection. [1,5]
2. When a Person Has Experienced Trauma or Loss
For those who have survived overwhelming pain, spirituality can offer meaning, comfort, and a sense of stability when life feels unpredictable. Turning to faith may genuinely help a person cope. However, sometimes spiritual practices and statements can also create a protective layer that keeps the deeper emotional wounds from being seen, understood, and tended to. This can mean that the emotional story has not yet had space to be acknowledged and processed. [1,6]
3. When the Community Encourages Positivity or “Strength
”In some communities, emotional struggle is interpreted as spiritual failure. People learn, often without anyone saying it directly, that acceptance depends on appearing steady, grateful, and “strong in the Lord.” In these environments, suffering becomes something to hide rather than something to bring into light and relationship. Belonging feels like it needs to be maintained by suppressing what hurts. This can create a private world of pain that others never see, even in close faith relationships. People can feel that they are wearing a mask to church or mass every week. [2,7]
4. When Spiritual Leaders Model Avoidance
Leaders significantly shape the emotional norms of a community. When grief, doubt, anger, or questions are framed from the pulpit as signs of weak faith, people internalise the message that vulnerability must be overcome rather than expressed. Over time, honesty feels risky, even disloyal. In these settings, bypassing does not feel like avoidance at all — it feels like maturity, obedience, or spiritual growth. People silence themselves believing they are doing what is right. [1,2]
When Faith Language Replaces Feeling
Certain spiritual phrases are not harmful in themselves, and sometimes individuals find comfort in them, but the individual's situation and the timing matter.
Here are examples of how bypassing appears in everyday life:
These responses may be well-intentioned, and a person who is well-meaning may say them to offer comfort. However, they function as emotional stop-signs. They shut down the conversation. They interrupt the grieving process. They can create shame for feeling something deeply human.
Church Culture and Emotional Avoidance
Many churches value hope, joy, and peace — which are beautiful and meaningful. Yet without space for lament, anger, doubt, and grief, the emotional experience of faith becomes narrow.
Research shows that communities prone to spiritual bypass often express:
Overemphasis on positivity
Discomfort with emotional pain
Pressure to appear “spiritually strong”
Confusion between emotional distress and spiritual failure[3,4,7]
When the message becomes:
Real Christians don’t struggle.
People learn to hide.Not to heal.
When Christians Spiritually Bypass Themselves
Spiritual bypassing is not only interpersonal — it is also internal.
A person may:
Shut down their own righteous anger about abuse (“I shouldn’t feel this, I need to pray and trust in God.”)
Minimise their trauma (“God meant for this to happen so I could help others.”)
Shame themselves for grief (“God wants me to be grateful and focus on all he has given me.”)
Avoid therapy or seeking help (“I should be able to handle this with faith and prayer alone.”)
This is ultimately a form of avoidance, and suppression of feeling and emotion can contribute to or exacerbate to a range of mental health challenges, including Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Burnout, Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Depression.
Relational Bypass: When Faith is Used to Avoid Accountability
Research also identifies scenarios where spiritual bypass enables relational harm, including spiritual abuse. [3,4,8]
For example:
Calling another person’s distress “a spiritual attack” instead of acknowledging harmful behaviour that contributed to their distress.
Telling a victim of harm to “focus on their own heart” rather than addressing abuse
Labelling someone who raises concerns as “divisive,” “rebellious,” or “under spiritual deception”
Blaming the enemy or Satan for consequences of one’s own choices
This shifts responsibility away from the person who caused harm. It protects the person in power, or the institution, not the vulnerable one.
Healing from Spiritual Bypass
If you’ve been impacted by spiritual bypassing—whether you’ve experienced it from others, noticed it in your faith community, or recognised that you’ve been doing it yourself—healing begins with:
Naming the pain honestly
Re-learning that emotion is not dangerous
Reconnecting with the body
Developing emotional language
Considering working with a therapist who understands faith, trauma, and spiritual dynamics
If You’re Needing Support
If faith has become tangled with guilt, self-doubt, emotional exhaustion, or pressure to “be okay,” you are not alone.
It is possible to reclaim a faith that is honest, emotionally grounded, and deeply human.
My name is Kylie Walls, and I am a registered psychologist in Australia. I offer faith-sensitive, trauma-informed psychological support for those navigating spiritual distress, church harm, religious trauma, or emotional disconnection within faith contexts.
You are welcome to reach out when you are ready. You can book a session here; Home - Client Bookings.
References
Welwood, J. (1984). Principles of Inner Work.
Whitfield, C. (2003). Spiritual Bypassing in Recovery and Growth.
Cashwell, C., et al. (2004). Spiritual Bypass: A Preliminary Measurement Scale.
Picciotto, G., & Fox, J. (2018). Exploring Experts’ Perspectives on Spiritual Bypass. Pastoral Psychology, 67(1), 65–84.
Pargament, K. (2007). Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy.
Masters, R. (2010). Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters.
Koenig, H. (2012). Religion, Spirituality, and Health.
Langberg, D. (2015). Suffering and the Heart of God.
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