When I read your emails, I have full-body responses: I cheer, I shout, I wave my hands. Always, I feel fortunate that you trust me with your truths.

This week, a reader email featured big traumas and losses. The writer struggled with feeling that everyone was mad at her. But it was the last line that made me gasp:

“I will be free someday, not on this earth but hopefully in heaven.”

Those words were like a punch to the solar plexus, a hard-hitting example of emotional bypassing. When I caught my breath, I spoke out loud: “Oh, hell no.”

But before I tell you why I had such a big reaction, let’s clarify our terms.

What is emotional bypassing?

Emotional bypassing is when you do whatever you can to avoid feeling your feelings. It’s using a substance, activity, or relationship to keep a distance from your own emotional state.

Emotional bypassing can look like addictive behaviors, but it can look like traditionally “healthy” behaviors, too. You can use anything as an emotional bypass, really: volunteering, overworking, overexercising, self-denial…the list is endless.

It can also be subtle. Do you recognize any of these examples?

• A friend has just opened up to you, sharing about a big health challenge they’re going through. You listen and compassionately acknowledge how tough it’s been for them. But then they close up, saying, “Oh, it’s no big deal, everyone has something.”
• A relative shares news of a death in the extended family. By the time this registers and you can feel shocked and sad, they’re already talking about the latest show on Netflix.
• Every day on your morning walk, you get a nagging feeling that something’s not right in one of your relationships – someone’s lying to you, perhaps, or you’ve grown apart. Instead of looking closely, you put on a podcast and distract yourself that way.
• Dropping off your kids at school, you feel a swell of fear or grief arise. This seems unreasonable – you don’t understand where it’s coming from – so you crank up a happy song on the radio and push the “negative” feeling aside.

As you can see, emotional bypassing is about sidestepping your own feelings. It’s working frantically to avoid anything that’s emotionally uncomfortable.

In the coaching world, emotional bypassing often goes by the term, “buffering.” I like that word because it gives you a visual; you’re putting a buffer between yourself and your felt experience.

If you notice that you do this, welcome to the club! Everyone buffers. There’s no shame here, only an opportunity to notice the pattern.

Once you’ve noticed, the question becomes: How much are you resisting your own emotions? How much time and energy are you spending in fighting what you’re actually feeling? 

Remember, anything can be a buffer. Anything can keep you at a distance from yourself…even religion and spirituality.

What is spiritual bypassing?

Spiritual bypassing is one subset of emotional bypassing. With spiritual bypassing, you take religious and/or spiritual practices, doctrines, or beliefs to buffer. You effectively use spirituality to block you from having a felt human experience.

That’s what my reader was doing when she wrote, “I will be free someday, not on this earth but hopefully in heaven.” And it hit me hard because I’ve seen exactly how the hope of heaven can be misused and abused.

If you’ve read my book, then you know that before I went to church, I believed in heaven. My heaven was simple: It would be a place where I could ask my autistic brother any question, and hear his true answer. It would be a place of connection, with no barriers between people.

But then I was brought into the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) cult. There, I heard many sermons about the World Tomorrow – the WCG’s version of heaven – where the lamb would lay down with the lion.

On the surface, these versions of heaven sounded similar. Peace, love, and connection all the way!

The problem was, the WCG used the promise of their particular heaven to extort people here on earth. The organization demanded tremendous amounts of money, time, and commitment.

To give just one example, for years members were required to give 30% of their pre-tax income to the church. That’s not a typo: thirty percent.

And of course, ours was the One True Church and the One Right Way, and everyone else was misguided. So that drove a serious wedge into any relationship that wasn’t based in the church.

Living this way was hard here on earth, but heaven was the great carrot dangled in front of us. In the World Tomorrow, everything would be made right.

What are examples of spiritual bypassing?

Perhaps the biggest and most well-known example of spiritual bypassing is heaven itself.

How many times have you seen “heaven” used to justify horrors here on earth? How many people have been subjected to terrible conditions here, then told not to take action on their own behalf, because freedom is only available in the next life?

“Heaven” was what I held to when my teenage brother became severely mentally ill and hurt himself and others. “Heaven” was my hope when I pleaded with my parents to let me live at a friend’s house to be safe, when I begged for mercy and didn’t receive it.

As a teen I never did drugs, but I did use heaven to dull my senses and numb my pain. “Heaven” stopped me from pushing back against injustice here on earth.

Which brings us back to that line a reader wrote to me: “I will be free someday, not on this earth but hopefully in heaven.”

In this context, “someday” signals a system of oppression. It’s a spiritual bypass. And to that I say, hell no.

If you believe in heaven and that helps you, carry on. But if, like me, you’ve ever used a spiritual belief to justify keeping yourself in a cage here on earth … then would you consider taking a closer look?

For me, a great test of personal beliefs is whether or not I’d wish that belief to manifest itself in someone else I love.

This “I will be free someday” belief doesn’t pass that test. You wouldn’t turn to a friend who was hurting, and say, “Too bad that you feel trapped inside; you can’t make changes and create mental and emotional freedom now, though. You have to give up and wait until you die!”

Can you feel the cruelty in that? I can. So then why do we do that to ourselves?

You can spend your entire life waiting for “someday.”
Or: You can change the things you can, right here and right now.

Here’s what I know: Freedom is a choice we make, moment by moment. Even in horrible, extreme circumstances with actual cages involved, inner freedom is still possible.

To quote Victor Frankl:

“Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

If Frankl can say that, given the horrors he endured – how can we not do the same?
How can we not harness the freedom that we DO have?

Anyone can future-trip. Few can make changes in the here and now. But you? I have a feeling that you’re one of the few who can.

How to reclaim your life from emotional bypassing

First: Notice the times when you buffer and bypass. Pay attention. You don’t need to change it right now, just name it for what it is. Identify this pattern out loud: “Oh look! I’m scared to feel sad, so I’m putting on a podcast (or working late, or whatever) to distract myself.”

Next: Teach yourself body-based tools to regulate your nervous system. Here are a few that I use, all easily searchable online: Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) from Dr. David Berceli; the Repower Tool from Dr. Valerie Rein; the Daily Practice from Anna Runkle.

Then: Gently, gently begin to create space, giving yourself permission to feel. The best way I know to do this is to begin a practice of Doing Nothing for 15 minutes per day. This is how you build your capacity to allow emotion to rise up within you.

If Doing Nothing for 15 minutes per day feels like too much of a stretch to start, try simply being with a given feeling for a few seconds longer than usual. If you’d typically “tune out” a feeling immediately, see if you can allow it for a brief moment.

Again, please be gentle with yourself in this process. When it comes to emotional work, kindness is the most important thing. Pushing hard is counterproductive. Instead, gently work on expanding your capacity to feel.

Remember these wise words from Pema Chödrön:

“So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior.”

Personally, I also find it helpful to name the “forbidden” feeling out loud: “This is anger. I’m feeling anger right now.” For some reason, this simple naming-out-loud practice makes it easier for me to allow the emotion. After all, I’ve felt anger before and survived!

In this interview, I talk about this starting at about the 16 minute mark.

Becoming willing to feel: a story

Years ago, my parents and my brother Willie came to Alabama for a visit. After several days of group activities, I needed to recharge. I’m an introvert through and through, and I get twitchy if I don’t take solo time.

We celebrated Willie’s birthday on the fourth day of my family’s stay. That afternoon, Willie wanted to see a movie. As we made plans, I realized that I could drop my family off at the theater and take two hours for myself.

That is, if I dared defy that internal accusation: “It’s your brother’s birthday! How can you be so selfish?!”

That question paralyzed me. I couldn’t make a decision, so I pulled my husband Jonathan aside and asked, “Would not staying for the movie make me a terrible person?”

It may sound silly, but at the time, I was totally in earnest. An internal tug-of-war raged: Go! Don’t go! Make your family happy! Take some time for yourself!

Jonathan encouraged me to come home and rest, but I could tell by his tone that he didn’t think I’d actually do it. (I didn’t blame him. He knew how hard it would be for me.)

On the drive to the theater, I was still torn. Wouldn’t a good sister and daughter go to the movie and sacrifice her need for restorative time?

Maybe so. But then I remembered: my goal is not to be good anymore. Nowadays, my goal is to be real. To be myself. To be fully alive, fully human.

So I took a deep breath and told my family the truth: I needed to go home and rest. They were surprised, but not upset. As I pulled away from the curb, though, I felt SO much false guilt.

That feeling lasted for about a minute. (It was a long minute.) But I breathed through it, and when it passed, I felt … free. I had two hours to be alone! I was practically dancing with relief.

In order to stop people-pleasing (read: emotional bypassing by seeking approval), you need to be willing to feel the false guilt that arises when you “let people down.”

As Henry Cloud and John Townsend write in Boundaries:

“… A sign that you’re becoming a boundaried person is often a sense of self-condemnation …. When the struggler actually sets a limit … the conscience moves into overdrive, as its unrealistic demands are being disobeyed …. In a funny way … activating the hostile conscience is a sign of spiritual growth.”

Make no mistake: this is emotional power-lifting. If you’re like me, you’ve been dodging such uncomfortable feelings for decades. You’ve been doing whatever it takes to avoid the tidal wave of guilt that crashes over you when you risk honesty.

Here’s what I’ve learned: when unnecessary self-blame floods your body, you can breathe through it. You are stronger than that feeling. It will not wash you away.

That day at the movie theater, the sense of self-recrimination was intense. (Back then, I hadn’t learned this powerful step by step self-forgiveness process.) Still, I kept driving. I decided to trust that the feeling would pass.

Plus, the astonished look on Jonathan’s face when I came home early made it all worthwhile.

This is a humble story, I know. But it’s the everyday moments that change us. It’s the ordinary choice points that alter the course of our lives.

So today, I encourage you: when you meet your next choice point, take a moment. Listen. Consider that what your mind labels “selfish” might be the kindest, wisest action you could take.

I understand how hard it is to step out of martyr mode. But you can start small: say no to just one request this week, then use the time to do something kind for yourself.

Ready to free up time?

Enter your email address below to receive my special Sacred Circle Exercise, a step by step process to help you get in touch with what’s most important to you, and free up time to devote to it.