Why radically accepting this year might be the best thing we can do to truly heal and grow in 2021.
Are You Spiritually Bypassing 2020?
This year we have collectively experienced massive trauma on a scale some scholars have likened to the societal impact of World War II and the Great Depression—events that have lived exclusively in the pages of history textbooks for my generation. As our nation passes 333,000 COVID-19 deaths—which is comparative to experiencing the devastation of 9/11 every day for 100 consecutive days—we mourn our physical losses as well as the losses of our small businesses, of physical touch, of financial and emotional security, and of so much of the culture we once knew.
In this context it makes sense that feel-good affirmations have proliferated across the public forum that is social media since the beginning of the pandemic. Everything happens for a reason seemed to be the comfort phrase of choice in the spring as my peers were furloughed from jobs or forced to move back home with their parents. Then over the summer, when a dear friend from Long Island announced on Instagram that her mother had died due to the virus after a two-month-long battle on a ventilator and an induced medical coma, I noticed an influx of other similar one-liners in the comments—things like “sending love and light” and “she’s in a better place.” These are phrases I too have said to console friends and community during these trying times. And as loss became the heightened theme of my own existence in the fall—when my grandfather passed away in China after battling the fast spread of a cancerous tumor, just a week before my partner’s father passed from lymphoma in the Bronx—I found temporary relief in these sentiments while prioritizing a mindset that looked to the future. Then I realized I was spiritually bypassing the raw pain of these cumulative experiences—a mountain of emotions that was easier to ignore than to climb with everything else going on this year.
First coined by clinical psychologist John Welwood in the early 1980s, spiritual bypassing describes the act of using explanations of enlightenment or catchall sentiments to avoid complex psychological issues. “It’s a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks,” Welwood explains in his 2000 book, Toward a Psychology of Awakening. “Essentially it’s avoiding or repressing one’s basic needs or feelings that may be uncomfortable and giving meaning through spirituality,” adds therapist and mental health advocate Liz Beecroft.
As we have witnessed some of this country’s deepest flaws bubble to the surface—health-care inequities, racial and social injustice, access to fair and free elections—it’s perhaps understandable that so many of us would want to emotionally sidestep our realities, if just to maintain a sense of sanity. “Given these complexities and the complexity of feeling multiple feelings at once, feelings that might be difficult to put meaning or rationale to, it’s a lot easier to use spiritual practice to compensate for emotional issues rather than processing them,” confirms Beecroft. But doing so might be a mistake, suggests Deganit Nuur, a clairvoyant and spiritual healer who splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. “Destruction precedes creation, and what we’re experiencing right now is a collective destruction full of uncertainty and discomfort to pave the way for a collective creation. People who are bypassing are skipping steps necessary for true healing, growth, and evolution.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Sophia Li
