Trauma-Informed Spirituality

For someone who has been committed to a mystic, spiritual path for the vast majority of my life, I nevertheless have significant issues with some of the ways that spirituality is discussed. One of the foremost of these is the ways that spiritual language is all too often used to gaslight the very real challenges, traumas, and oppressions that folks face within their lives.

I wrote about the concept of spiritual bypassing in my article “Not Okay,” which appears in the Summer 2020 issue of Zen Bow; you can read it on pages 4-5, if you feel so inclined.

For those who don’t feel so inclined, I am going to go ahead and quote a few of the paragraphs from that article, as they are relevant for the reflections I’ll be making within this post:

Recently, when on one of the many group Zoom calls that have become a central part of COVID-19 life, a friend of mine remarked that there are moments when they can’t help but fear that perhaps things won’t be okay after all. They continued to share that they are concerned that the physical and economic impact of the pandemic will shake the very foundations of our society in such a way that all that they have worked for will come to naught, will crumble, will be subsumed with grief and loss. 

And here’s the kicker—to a certain degree, they may be correct. 

I want to pause here, with that feeling—that fear that things won’t be okay—without rushing into the comforting panacea of spiritual bypassing. As John Welwood, the clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who coined the term, said in a 2011 interview with Tricycle: 

“‘Spiritual bypassing’ is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself…. When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to try to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. We may also use our notion of absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits.”

I witnessed a great deal of spiritual bypassing in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, and continue to see spiritual bypassing occur in conversations regarding racism, classism, and other manifestations of systemic injustice. As Michelle Johnson notes in her book Skill in Action, those who are engaged in spiritual bypassing assert that the absolute truth of “All Are One” erases the very real suffering that results from the ways that racism, xenophobia, and class disparities impact those with marginalized dimensions of diversity; spiritual bypassing further asserts that “All Will Be Well” in situations in which people are suffering and dying. 

One common example of spiritual bypassing include the profoundly problematic Law of Attraction, which is really just a pseudo-spiritual reframing of the bootstrap theory. Another example is the “Good Vibes Only” messaging that appears on the spaghetti-strap tank tops of white women in yoga studios across the U.S.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve frequently seen evidence of spiritual bypassing within texts and communities related to Reiki, Paganism, and meditation.

I truly believe that the ubiquity of spiritual bypassing is one of the core reasons why trauma survivors all too often feel unwelcome in spiritual environments.

After all, a trauma can be understood in part as a painful experience from the past that continues to affect one in the present. The traumatic experience can be made further painful when it is compounded with traumatic invalidation:

Traumatic invalidation occurs when an individual’s environment repeatedly or intensely communicates that the individual’s experiences, characteristics, or emotional reactions are unreasonable and/or unacceptable. Invalidation can be especially traumatic when it comes from a significant person, group, or authority that the individual relies upon to meet their needs. Traumatic invalidation threatens an individual’s understanding and acceptance of their own emotional experiences and often leads to a state of pervasive insecurity.

(Source: https://bostonchildstudycenter.com/ptsd/)

In order for spiritual spaces to be trauma-informed, they need to allow for people to be in the midst of any and all emotional states: to do otherwise is to subject people to traumatic invalidation under the guise of healing and “letting go.”

Don’t get be wrong: healing and letting go are important. However, they are not simple, nor are they passive processes. Rather, they are gradual unfoldings that can take place only after the feelings, memories, and experiences are honored through attention and validation.

I oftentimes use the metaphor of the cleansing and healing of a physical wound to describe the process of mental and emotional healing processes. To approach our tender, vulnerable, and painful emotions with the gaslighting that is inherent in “Good Vibes Only” is akin to wrapping a new gauze bandage over an old one: it may look cleaner than the one that was already covering the wound, but it does nothing to actually help it heal.

What is instead infinitely more helpful is to unwrap the wound, cleanse it and see it for what it is, to identify whether further steps are needed to promote necessary healing and prevent infection, and to only then gently and lovingly rebandage it.

I encourage my readers to contemplate whether they have inadvertently engaged in spiritual bypassing of themselves or others. Unpack why you may have done so, and do your best to gently let go of the impulse to avoid looking at the painful aspects of existence.

This isn’t at all to say you should dwell on or obsess about those painful aspects: not at all. Look for the beauty and joviality too. If you’re able to, believe that healing can happen; if you aren’t yet in a place where you are able to believe that healing can happen for you, start to curiously look for evidence of healing within others.

You know what’s better than Good Vibes Only? Real Vibes. Honor your different emotions and sensations. Don’t rush the path of acceptance.

Who you are and how you feel are welcome here.