IX Coach

Spiritual Bypassing: When Practice Becomes a Way Around Your Feelings

How a sincere practice can quietly become a way of not feeling, and how to turn back toward what it was skipping

What is spiritual bypassing and how do you stop doing it?

Spiritual bypassing is using spiritual ideas or practices to step around painful feelings, unmet needs and unfinished personal growth instead of going through them. The psychotherapist John Welwood named it in 1984, describing it as the tendency to avoid or prematurely transcend basic human needs, feelings, and developmental tasks. His article links it to using spiritual practice to make up for developmental deficiencies, which is a question of how practice is used rather than a verdict on spirituality itself.

John Welwood, a psychotherapist and practitioner of a spiritual path, introduced the term in a 1984 article. He wrote about a disturbing tendency among certain members of spiritual communities, which he could observe in himself as well: using meditation or spiritual involvements to bypass personal, emotional "unfinished business" rather than meet it. Robert Augustus Masters, a spiritual teacher and integral psychotherapist, wrote a 2010 book on the subject. Its publisher describes it as the first book fully devoted to spiritual bypassing, and its chapters include "Let's stop being negative about our negativity", "Neurotic tolerance in caring's clothing: blind compassion", "The trashing of anger" and "Boundaries". Researchers Cashwell, Fox, Picciotto and colleagues wrote about it for counseling practice, built a questionnaire to measure it, and later work described two parts: avoiding difficult inner experience, and putting that avoidance in spiritual terms. The writers quoted here stress the same concern: the problem is not the spirituality but its use as a way around feeling. The practices below come from Welwood's and Masters' writing and from the counseling literature. Difficulties that arise inside meditation itself, and the stage maps contemplative traditions use, are a separate subject not covered here.

Practices

How these practices connect

The practices here share one move: reaching upward or outward to get away from something that is asking to be felt. Catching the bypass phrase and questioning the good-practitioner identity expose the ideas and self-images that do the reaching; feeling before letting go and coming down into the body put attention back where the feeling lives; finding the no that anger protects and naming the renounced need recover the ordinary human material that was skipped; noticing when you rush others shows the same reach in relationships; and pairing practice with psychological work gives each kind of growth its own job. Welwood's 1984 article pictures a person standing "between earth and sky"; read through that picture, the problem is losing the ground under spiritual openness, not the openness itself.

What are the signs that I might be spiritually bypassing?

The writers who named the pattern describe recognisable signs. Welwood observed people using meditation or spiritual involvements to bypass personal, emotional "unfinished business", using notions of absolute truth to belittle relative, personal needs, and treating being a "good" practitioner as a compensatory identity. Masters' book has chapters on boundaries, anger and blind compassion, and his BatGap interview describes people who have "not learned how to say the simple word no from their guts". The most practical tell is timing: a spiritual phrase that arrives before a feeling has been felt. None of these signs proves bypassing on its own; they are prompts to look more closely.

Does spiritual bypassing mean my spiritual practice or faith is the problem?

The writers quoted here do not place the problem in practice itself. Welwood, a psychotherapist and practitioner of a spiritual path, coined the term and links it to trying to use spirituality to make up for developmental deficiencies, which he says "just doesn't work". Research supports that reading: a 2026 synthesis of people's own accounts found that bypassing was resolved by differentiating from spirituality rather than abandoning it, and a cross-cultural study in Spain and Honduras described spiritual bypass as a possible functional or dysfunctional coping strategy depending on the social context. Keeping your practice while letting feelings be felt is the direction these sources point.

Does spiritual bypassing happen in Christianity and other religions too?

The pattern is not tied to one tradition. The publisher of Masters' book notes that whether Christian commandments or Buddhist precepts, spiritual ideals can provide easy justification for practitioners to duck uncomfortable feelings. Patel and Kumar's 2026 synthesis drew on accounts from Muslim American, African American Pentecostal and Christian contexts, among others. That does not make any religion the cause. The question is the same in every tradition: is a teaching being used to meet a painful feeling, or to avoid it? Forgiveness, surrender and trust can all be lived either way.

How do spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity relate to each other?

They overlap in the move they make: both push a painful feeling aside with a positive or higher-sounding message before it has been felt. Spiritual bypassing is the specific case where the message is spiritual, such as karma, divine plan, nonattachment or oneness, and where the person's identity as a spiritual practitioner adds pressure to stay out of reach of difficult feelings. Masters' book has a chapter titled "Let's stop being negative about our negativity". Researchers measure two parts: avoiding inner experience, and putting that avoidance in spiritual terms. The response is the same either way: let the feeling be acknowledged first, then see whether the larger view still fits.

How should I respond when someone spiritually bypasses my pain?

When someone answers your hurt with "everything happens for a reason" or "just let it go", the reply may reflect their discomfort as much as your feeling. Welwood observed that people who are only oriented toward spirit tend to get impatient with other people's stuckness, and Masters gives "that must just be your karma" as a line he contrasts with stepping in and saying no. You can say plainly that you are not ready for the bigger picture yet and want to be heard first, and you can take the feeling to someone who can stay with it. The same awareness helps you notice when you do it to others.

What does the research actually show about spiritual bypass?

The earliest empirical study cited here, a 2010 study of college students, states in its abstract that the phenomenon had not previously been subjected to empirical inquiry. It found that mindfulness and alexithymia (which the abstract glosses as emotional restrictiveness) accounted for depression beyond what spirituality accounted for, and that those two plus narcissism did the same for anxiety. Fox, Cashwell and Picciotto (2017) published a measure of spiritual bypass, and Fox and Picciotto (2019) found, in a sample of 783 participants from the general population, that its two parts, psychological avoidance and spiritualizing, partly mediated the link between spirituality and depression and anxiety, and completely mediated its link with stress. Findings are not uniform: a 2025 study of 479 respondents during the COVID-19 pandemic found avoidance linked to lower distress and spiritualizing with no significant effect. Most of this is correlational, and none of the studies cited here tests a method for reducing bypass.

How do you choose between these?

If you suspect you are bypassing but cannot see how, start by catching the phrase that arrives before the feeling. If the feeling itself never quite lands, practise feeling it before letting it go, and if you mostly live in ideas, come down into the body. If you stay nice while something is not okay, work with anger and the no it protects. If you have decided you are above needing people, name the renounced need. If shame follows every difficult feeling, question the good-practitioner rules. If the pattern shows up when others are hurting, notice when you rush them. And if one issue has stayed stuck through years of sincere practice, add psychological work beside your practice.

What these approaches do not settle

The concept rests on Welwood's and Masters' clinical and personal observation. The studies cited here sample people, some through questionnaires and some through interviews; the findings are correlational and mixed. In one pandemic-era sample the avoidance part was linked to lower, not higher, distress, and a cross-cultural study described spiritual bypass as functional or dysfunctional depending on context. A 2026 synthesis of people's own accounts describes bypassing as a contextually adaptive response to psychological pain, maintained by structural conditions, rather than a fixed psychological deficit in the individual. None of the sources cited here tests a practice for reducing spiritual bypass, including the practices described on this page. Telling bypassing apart from genuine peace from the outside is hard, and the label can be misused against someone's faith. Strong feelings can surface when this pattern loosens; work that feels overwhelming belongs with a trained therapist. Difficulties arising within meditation, and contemplative stage maps, are outside this page.

Practice this with IX Coach

Practice this with IX Coach

Frequently asked questions

What is spiritual bypassing and how do you stop doing it?

Spiritual bypassing is using spiritual ideas or practices to step around painful feelings, unmet needs and unfinished personal growth instead of going through them. The psychotherapist John Welwood named it in 1984, describing it as the tendency to avoid or prematurely transcend basic human needs, feelings, and developmental tasks. His article links it to using spiritual practice to make up for developmental deficiencies, which is a question of how practice is used rather than a verdict on spirituality itself.

How do you catch the spiritual phrase that arrives before the feeling?

Welwood describes using notions of absolute truth to belittle relative, personal needs. Research on the pattern separates two parts: avoiding the difficult experience, and "spiritualizing" it, putting the avoidance in spiritual terms. The phrase is often true at its own level, which is what makes it hard to notice; the tell is its timing. When it arrives before the feeling has been felt, it closes the feeling down instead of putting it in perspective.

How do you feel it, acknowledge it, then let it go?

Welwood draws a distinction inside meditation itself. One approach tries to eliminate difficult tendencies and replace them with virtuous ones, which he compares to pulling up a poisonous plant; he writes that this "could lead to spiritual bypassing, trying to deny negative feelings and emotions in the name of heavenly highs." The other, in mindfulness practice, notes painful thoughts and emotions as they arise, bows to them, acknowledges them, and then lets them go and comes back to the breath.

How do you come down from the head into the body?

Welwood calls grounding "the earth principle" and writes that grounding is "the very essence of psychological work". In Focusing, he notes, it is essential to "come down out of the thinking mind" into the body, and many systems share an understanding that real change happens as "an energy shift in the body, not through talk or intellectual insight alone." Masters describes sitting with an emotion rather than "on" it: holding it close, noticing the sensations in the body and the quality of mind it generates, and watching it move.

How do you let anger show you where your no is?

In his BatGap interview, Masters says he sees many people on spiritual paths who "have not learned how to say the simple word no from their guts", so "they get walked on" and "become too nice." He says anger has to be "on tap": "Not to overuse it, but if you cannot say a strong, authentic no, life is more difficult." Welwood's 1984 list of the psychological work people skip includes a self-respect that is "not overwhelmed or crushed by other people's opinions." When anger is treated as unspiritual, the limit it was guarding tends to go unspoken.

How do you name the human need you decided you were above?

In the Tricycle interview, Welwood says that trying to practise nonattachment by dismissing one's need for love "only drives the need underground". He also says that to grow into a healthy human being "we need a base of secure attachment", and that the two tracks of development "can mutually enrich each other." His 1984 article calls working with "needs, scripts, hunger for love, fear of love" "psychological, not spiritual work", and names the goal as a self-respect "not overwhelmed or crushed by other people's opinions."

What is Question the "good practitioner" and its shoulds?

Welwood describes being a "good" spiritual practitioner as something that can become a compensatory identity, one that "covers up and defends against an underlying deficient identity". He calls a practice taken over by shoulds a "spiritual superego", "the voice that whispers 'shoulds' in our ear." Masters' book has a chapter titled "Let's stop being negative about our negativity". When anger, need or sadness feels like evidence of spiritual failure, it tends to get hidden, and the hiding is the bypass.

How do you notice when you rush someone else past their pain?

Bypassing is not only something we do to ourselves. Welwood writes that compassion needs grounding ("without earth, there would be no compassion"), and that "if we are only oriented toward spirit, we tend to get impatient with other people's stuckness." Masters' book has a chapter titled "Neurotic tolerance in caring's clothing: blind compassion", and in his BatGap interview he gives "that must just be your karma" as a line he contrasts with stepping in and saying no.

How do you keep your practice and bring in psychological work too?

Welwood's 1984 article calls grounding "the very essence of psychological work" and says that "the essence of spiritual work is learning to let go and surrender", and that a complete spiritual path involves both along with awakening the heart. Cashwell and colleagues' 2007 article argues for healing "at the cognitive, emotional, and physical levels, as well as at the spiritual level for holistic wellness." A 2026 meta-ethnography found that bypassing was resolved by differentiating from spirituality rather than abandoning it.

What are the signs that I might be spiritually bypassing?

The writers who named the pattern describe recognisable signs. Welwood observed people using meditation or spiritual involvements to bypass personal, emotional "unfinished business", using notions of absolute truth to belittle relative, personal needs, and treating being a "good" practitioner as a compensatory identity. Masters' book has chapters on boundaries, anger and blind compassion, and his BatGap interview describes people who have "not learned how to say the simple word no from their guts". The most practical tell is timing: a spiritual phrase that arrives before a feeling has been felt. None of these signs proves bypassing on its own; they are prompts to look more closely.

Does spiritual bypassing mean my spiritual practice or faith is the problem?

The writers quoted here do not place the problem in practice itself. Welwood, a psychotherapist and practitioner of a spiritual path, coined the term and links it to trying to use spirituality to make up for developmental deficiencies, which he says "just doesn't work". Research supports that reading: a 2026 synthesis of people's own accounts found that bypassing was resolved by differentiating from spirituality rather than abandoning it, and a cross-cultural study in Spain and Honduras described spiritual bypass as a possible functional or dysfunctional coping strategy depending on the social context. Keeping your practice while letting feelings be felt is the direction these sources point.

Does spiritual bypassing happen in Christianity and other religions too?

The pattern is not tied to one tradition. The publisher of Masters' book notes that whether Christian commandments or Buddhist precepts, spiritual ideals can provide easy justification for practitioners to duck uncomfortable feelings. Patel and Kumar's 2026 synthesis drew on accounts from Muslim American, African American Pentecostal and Christian contexts, among others. That does not make any religion the cause. The question is the same in every tradition: is a teaching being used to meet a painful feeling, or to avoid it? Forgiveness, surrender and trust can all be lived either way.

How do spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity relate to each other?

They overlap in the move they make: both push a painful feeling aside with a positive or higher-sounding message before it has been felt. Spiritual bypassing is the specific case where the message is spiritual, such as karma, divine plan, nonattachment or oneness, and where the person's identity as a spiritual practitioner adds pressure to stay out of reach of difficult feelings. Masters' book has a chapter titled "Let's stop being negative about our negativity". Researchers measure two parts: avoiding inner experience, and putting that avoidance in spiritual terms. The response is the same either way: let the feeling be acknowledged first, then see whether the larger view still fits.

How should I respond when someone spiritually bypasses my pain?

When someone answers your hurt with "everything happens for a reason" or "just let it go", the reply may reflect their discomfort as much as your feeling. Welwood observed that people who are only oriented toward spirit tend to get impatient with other people's stuckness, and Masters gives "that must just be your karma" as a line he contrasts with stepping in and saying no. You can say plainly that you are not ready for the bigger picture yet and want to be heard first, and you can take the feeling to someone who can stay with it. The same awareness helps you notice when you do it to others.

What does the research actually show about spiritual bypass?

The earliest empirical study cited here, a 2010 study of college students, states in its abstract that the phenomenon had not previously been subjected to empirical inquiry. It found that mindfulness and alexithymia (which the abstract glosses as emotional restrictiveness) accounted for depression beyond what spirituality accounted for, and that those two plus narcissism did the same for anxiety. Fox, Cashwell and Picciotto (2017) published a measure of spiritual bypass, and Fox and Picciotto (2019) found, in a sample of 783 participants from the general population, that its two parts, psychological avoidance and spiritualizing, partly mediated the link between spirituality and depression and anxiety, and completely mediated its link with stress. Findings are not uniform: a 2025 study of 479 respondents during the COVID-19 pandemic found avoidance linked to lower distress and spiritualizing with no significant effect. Most of this is correlational, and none of the studies cited here tests a method for reducing bypass.

Research

Related concepts