135: Creating a Life of Struggle
Every single episode I do, sometimes I have to take a moment and pray that my words are coming out as they are meant to, and that the meaning and intent behind my words comes clear and out to you.
Today I want to talk about spiritual bypassing. I believe in God, I believe in prayer, and I believe in giving it to God and that he will help us. I also believe that whatever healing comes in our lives in whatever ultimately comes from God.
But- using God, prayer, or other methods of not processing or going through the physical symptoms, emotions, or traumas that you have experienced is not helpful. Or someone putting it on someone else.
Ok, so if I look up the definition of what spiritual bypassing is I found
“spiritual bypass was coined by the late psychologist John Welwood in 1984 to describe what he saw in a Buddhist community in which he was involved. He describes it as the “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
We all have parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at, so we deny or push them aside. When we bury these aspects in the subconscious rather than resolve and integrate them, they often take on dysfunctional roles and behaviors that prevent healing and cause harm to ourselves and relationships.” (Source)
While I do believe that the things that happen in my life are in God’s hands, I also believe that it’s our job to feel, experience, and move through the hard things we feel.
If we have a broken arm, we don’t pray to God that he will fix your arm solely. Maybe you pray for complete healing, but you go and get your arm in a cast, or surgery or whatever you need to do.
For some reason with emotional things or life circumstances it’s so easy to not do anything else, but to say things like trust God, or God will take care of you.
I get it, I believe God will. I believe God does take care of us. But like I said, when you are in emotional turmoil and your child is dead, it’s like you are invalidating the pain, or the trial they are facing every day in their life.
So a lot of times, a person can do this to themselves. An example might be like I have so much to be grateful for, God has blessed me so much, so I shouldn’t be sad about what’s going on in my life.
And then they don’t allow themselves to feel the emotion that they are because they should be grateful. But just because you are grateful for many things in your life, does not mean you can’t be sad for the things that happened in your life, but many times it’s also others putting it on someone else who is grieving. Here are some examples.
"Everything happens for a reason."
"You create your own happiness."
"It was for the best."
"It was a blessing in disguise."
"Good vibes only!"
“Thoughts and prayers!”
Everything happens for a reason. While yes, I also agree with this or more like everything happens exactly as it’s supposed to- this doesn’t help someone who is grieving the loss of their child.
It’s like using these phrases to skip the emotional work, pain, and experience that comes through going through a life altering change. It’s like trying to be positive and bring someone out of their grief, when you know what? The only way through grief is through the grief.
Invalidating your pain, guilt, anger, sadness, pain, it just creates more struggle, pain, suffering, sickness, in your life down the road.
Instead of letting it out and processing it, it’s shoved down because you should be more trusting, you should be okay with it, because this is what was supposed to happen. You shouldn’t be angry because good people don’t get angry. Seriously. It’s not one bit helpful.
Let’s take anger for example. Say you are feeling a lot of anger after the death of your child, the anger could be directed at a person, at a thing, God, or even your child. And then someone comes and tells you something like everything happens for a reason, or it was for the best.
It’s like saying you shouldn’t be angry, shove that down, are you not trusting enough? I’ve been told when I was very deep in my anger with grief that I shouldn’t be angry. Saying I shouldn’t be angry doesn’t make me not angry. Do you see how invalidating that is?
Ok, so let’s go back to if this is your experience. And you are very angry. But then you’ve never been so angry before, and you are scared. You don’t like being angry. You think being angry is not for good people like you. You try to be a good person, so this anger shouldn’t be here. And so you try to ignore it and shove it down, and try to be good. Try to find the good, or try to be a better person, all the while the anger hasn’t come out, it’s just festering there, deep inside of your body.
This is what spiritual bypassing is. Trying to use something higher to ignore the truth and the physical experience in your body.
This does no good.
The anger, or any emotion inside of you, only gets worse, it festers, it causes sickness, it causes resentment, it causes hopelessness, it’s exhausting because you have to continue to fight it to keep it down.
Instead if you could take it out, and let yourself process it, you don’t need to act it out on others, or process the emotion in your body, and then you actually are able to put more trust in God. You are actually able to be the person you want to be easier, because you are not hindered by the current of anger that is running through your body.
So- what’s the point of this whole episode. For you to not do this to yourself. Don’t skip the emotional and mental work because you are trying to be a good person. Or because someone else has it worse than you. Or because you feel like if you were more trusting in God you would be able to put everything in his hands right away.
God made us this way. He gave us emotions. He made our bodies perfect, and you know what? Our bodies know how to process and move through emotions if we allow it. It’s what goes on in our minds that stops us from allowing ourselves to.
You have the ability and capacity to feel, experience, and move through every emotion. You can practice this over and over. You can learn how to be present in your body emotionally and mentally, and not try to skip over the most intense work you can ever do, which is to be able to feel and process the emotions you feel.
You are a good person, you can be a good person and feel emotions. If you listened to my episode a few weeks ago about how your feelings are not fact, you don’t have to make what you are feeling mean anything about you. It’s just an emotion and you can let it go, but only by allowing it to flow through and out, it only gets stuck in you when you shove it down.
So- if you are ready to stop doing this, and ready to dive into the work, come learn more in my free 3 day workshop Relief in Grief. Registration opened yesterday, you can join us now! We get started on the 20th, and it’s going to be so good. Here is what a mom who previously joined Relief in Grief said about her biggest takeaway:
“One that comes to mind is the power of community and being with other mom's who've lost children.”
Another said this:
“I really liked the way Megan taught us to process our emotions and the way everyone could lean on each other without being judged or criticized.”
And one more mom said this:
“I learned that I can let my emotions, especially guilt surface and work through it. Also I'm not alone.”
So, don’t wait any longer, do it right now, especially with grief brain where it’s so easy to forget even though you really want to join, go right now to www.reliefingriefsupportgroup.com and save your spot!
See you soon friend!
Make sure you come join us in Relief in Grief, my free 3 day workshop! You can sign up here! This free workshop will help you learn how to care for yourself in grief, process the emotions and thoughts that come after your child dies, and how to get through grief.
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
You can come check out Grieving Moms Haven at www.grievingmomshaven.com
