Spiritual Bypassing: The Toxic Positivity Trend Nobody Talks About
- Leslie Juvin-Acker
- 1 hour ago
- 9 min read
What if “good vibes only” was actually keeping you trapped in pain?
In a world obsessed with positivity, manifestation, and spiritual perfection, many people are unknowingly using spirituality to avoid grief, trauma, anger, accountability, and emotional truth. Spiritual bypassing may feel comforting in the moment, but over time it can deepen wounds, distort intuition, and disconnect us from authentic healing.
In this powerful article, Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. explores the hidden side of modern spirituality — and why true spiritual growth requires courage, honesty, emotional depth, and facing reality head-on.
Spiritual Bypassing Article Summary
In this deeply personal and thought-provoking article, Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. explores the hidden dangers of spiritual bypassing — the practice of using spirituality to avoid emotional pain, accountability, trauma, and difficult truths.
Through spiritual insight, psychology, personal storytelling, and discussions about nature, intuition, emotional healing, and toxic positivity, readers are encouraged to face life honestly rather than escaping into denial.
The article examines how spiritual bypassing can appear in religion, modern wellness culture, relationships, addiction, and even manipulation, while ultimately offering hope through authentic healing, self-awareness, courage, and connection to God, nature, and truth.
Spiritual Bypassing As a Way of Avoiding the Pain of Life
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. The only way to the Father is through me,” said Jesus.
He was speaking about the Christ Consciousness: the unification of physical consciousness, the mental realm of imagination, and the soul’s consciousness. It’s in this state that we are able to be in communion with the mind of God.
The practice of becoming one with God during our physical life is an edification of our “being.” We descended from Heaven and became man, and it is our inevitable evolution to return to God — our oneness.
Spiritual development is the path to conscious union with God. However that manifests (personal development, psychological development, emotional development, physical development) depends on our life path and the experiences we have chosen before embarking on it.
Spiritual Bypassing Is a Defense Mechanism That Eventually Forces Us to Face the Truth
Unfortunately, through our own fear of more pain and suffering, life can get hard and confusing. Consequently, it’s tempting to run away and avoid the conflict and pain that inevitably occur in life. We can run and use spiritual bypassing as a defense mechanism against pain, but life circumstances will eventually find us and force us to experience growth through an expansion of consciousness in a variety of ways.
Illness can force us to confront repressed emotions and trauma. Physical pain and suffering can make us stop, reassess our choices and values, and start over again. For example, fibromyalgia is often described as a symptom of repressed anger. Stomach and liver illnesses can harbor repressed rage and fear. Headaches may manifest as symptoms of mental overwhelm or avoidance.
Near-death experiences through critical accidents often leave survivors returning with beautiful messages and stories of love. In their stories, there are common themes about being one with God and feeling engulfed in God’s loving light, like being wrapped in a warm, safe blanket. In those spaces, there are no feelings of pain or suffering. Everything they once worried about no longer matters.
Some people who experience near-death experiences are saddened to return to their lives and the experience of living, fearing they may never feel that oneness again until death. Some individuals who experience near-death experiences attempt suicide in hopes of returning to God’s love.
Spiritual Bypassing Through Drug Use
There are also individuals who use drugs to bypass their negative feelings in order to reconnect with feelings of love. These individuals often do not yet have the skills to connect to their Christ Consciousness naturally.
Many people say they have had spiritual awakenings through the use of illicit drugs such as acid, ecstasy, and cocaine. Some use mushrooms and ayahuasca. While it is possible to create pathways in the brain chemically, over the long term these pathways can burn out and deteriorate the brain.
My spiritual guidance tells me that the use of drugs “shocks the system” open in order to receive messages and alter consciousness. However, ongoing drug use taxes the energy system and can eventually lead to deep depression as a result of neurological shock, vitamin deficiency, and lack of sleep and rest.
I don’t recommend the use of drugs to reach a spiritual connection with God. Why? Because Akashic readings describe drugs and alcohol as opening people up to disincarnate lower entities and possible spirit attachment. Additionally, drugs lower the body’s overall vibration and can spiral the physical body into sickness and imbalance.
Using drugs as a shortcut also bypasses the conscious unfolding and steady realizations that naturally occur through everyday life experiences with family, friendships, and community. When someone is using drugs heavily, they often detach from their communities, which can lead to isolation, loneliness, depression, and mental illness.
Spiritual Bypassing Is Unnecessary When God Is in Nature
What are the skills needed to connect to the Christ Consciousness? They involve a combination of esoteric wisdom found in Universal Truths (or laws, as some call them).
These truths include, but are not limited to, karma, manifestation, purpose, oneness, and energetic reciprocity.
Life and nature teach us these Universal Laws without formal instruction. Edgar Cayce once said in a reading that if anyone wanted to teach a child about God, it was best to turn to nature.
Within nature, we can connect to God and the universal forces. We can ground ourselves. We can process our feelings while going for a walk. We can quiet our minds and breathe with the changing tides of the ocean. God is truly everywhere if we quiet the chatter in our minds long enough to listen.
What’s even more important is that we can commune with others while communing with nature. Nature truly is an experience best shared.
Naturalist and environmental philosopher John Muir once said, “I have gone into the forest to lose my mind and find my soul.”
A Dream Reveals We Are Not Wandering Alone in the Wilderness of Life
I once had a dream that I was walking through a forest on a dirt trail while pushing a stubborn burro. Exasperated by the burro, I turned to my left and saw a sumptuous bramble of giant blackberries. They were the juiciest blackberries I had ever seen or tasted.
I looked up and saw the forest. But I wasn’t just looking at the forest — the forest and all of its individual trees were looking back at me. They did not have eyes, but they possessed a powerful consciousness that made me realize nature is aware of us. Nature knows us, sees us, hears us, and ultimately loves us.
God, through nature, attempts to connect with us daily. Quieting the mind and listening to nature can deepen our sense of calm, which leads to receptivity to hidden inner wisdom.
No Need for Spiritual Bypassing When You Tap Into Your Own Internal Guidance System
We receive the voice of God and become one with the mind of God in a variety of ways.
Sometimes, God comes as a still, small voice. It might say, “Call so-and-so,” “Turn here,” or “Get out now.” These quiet messages guide us out of dangerous or unclear situations and steer us toward safety.
Some people receive images in their minds or dreams. These messages are clear, strong, and confident. Some see signs from God or from loved ones who have passed on. Some see holographic images of nature spirits, also called elementals. Some physically sense danger or receive information through touch. Others channel healing energy through their bodies and the messages they speak.
However an individual receives messages from God or from other dimensions, these messages are clear, truthful, and helpful. If they are confusing, fear-based, or cause suffering, they are not from God but from fear and distortion.
Learning how to hone your spiritual guidance system takes practice and often mentoring from someone experienced and unbiased. I believe everyone has intuition. It’s that internal “B.S. detector.”
Spiritual Bypassing to Cross Boundaries and Manipulate Morals
Predators use spiritual bypassing to manipulate others through the distortion of morality. These individuals often have little to no personal boundaries and disrespect the boundaries of others.
For example, you may sense that someone is being dishonest with you, and when you confront them, they might respond with, “Oh, your heart is in a fear-based space right now,” as a way to make you distrust your own internal guidance system and trust theirs instead.
Spiritual bypassers may also try to convince people that anger is “unspiritual.” However, the Bible describes Jesus becoming angry several times, especially when he saw the tabernacle being used as a marketplace (Matthew 21:13). He overturned the tables and drove people out.
Many Christians and spiritually minded people forget that Jesus experienced anger. Many people picture Jesus as detached from life and conclude that anger should always be avoided or repressed.
As a result, people can manipulate others by suggesting that anyone who calls out disrespectful behavior is “unspiritual.” The truth is that spiritual people absolutely experience anger. Anger is often a useful emotional signal that boundaries have been crossed and needs are not being respected.
Those who weaponize spiritual bypassing may convince others that anger itself is sinful and that they should remain “cool” and detached from their emotions. They may even claim that someone “karmically deserved” abuse or mistreatment. This is false. Nobody deserves manipulation, bullying, or victimization.
Spiritual Bypassing to Avoid Dealing With Painful Feelings, Emotional Wounds, and Trauma
One of the greatest examples of spiritual bypassing in literature is The Scarlet Letter. In the story, two people carry a secret for years and privately punish themselves in the name of religion and social shame.
I remember thinking, “Can’t they just deal with their problems directly instead of punishing themselves with guilt?”
The internal dialogue of spiritual bypassing sounds like this:
“It’s God’s plan for me to suffer.”
“I must atone for my sins.”
“God is punishing me.”
Modern spiritual bypassing sounds more like:
“Think your problems away.”
“Change your mindset.”
“Focus only on the positive.”
“That’s just karma.”
“I have to respect their choices and just deal with it.”
“I’ll just manifest this person out of my life.”
We use these phrases to avoid pain, confrontation, accountability, and unresolved situations. Most of the time, we repeat these statements without deeper thought or honest self-exploration. That’s where spiritual bypassing becomes enabling — fostering denial, inaction, and ignorance.
Without facing our feelings, challenging our limiting beliefs, and having difficult conversations with people we are in conflict with, we are simply wishing our problems away.
The only way out of problems is through them — by rising to the occasion with courage, faith, and optimism. We may feel anger. We may speak difficult truths. We may experience conflict. But conflict is often simply multiple truths colliding in order to reveal a deeper truth.
I, myself, was once afraid to expose abusers, speak about my family history of domestic violence, and confront enablers of abuse. I incorrectly believed I had “risen above” discussing such things and that I didn’t need to confront them.
However, if we refuse to speak the truth of our experience because we fear abusers, we become part of the problem. And unfortunately, that is spiritual bypassing.
When I finally acknowledged what I was doing, I took a stand — and it freed both myself and others. It also taught me that threats from abusers are often just threats, and that speaking truth is ultimately safe and necessary.
Spiritual Work Is Our Life
Spiritual work is not always rainbow auras and crystalline dreams. Sometimes, it means exorcising the darkest parts of ourselves through sobering self-reflection and radical honesty.
Spiritual work will eventually lead us into moments where we feel completely one with God, and other moments where we feel like abandoned children wandering through the wilderness alone.
However, when we truly look at life, nature, and ourselves, we begin to realize that God is in us, with us, and surrounding us at all times — always trying to connect with us.
We simply have to open our hearts, allow that love in, and choose to do something meaningful with it.
Five Positive Affirmations
I face truth with courage and grace.
My healing journey is honest and sacred.
I trust my intuition and inner wisdom.
I am worthy of authentic peace and love.
Growth begins when I face myself honestly.
Poll Question
Have you ever realized you were spiritually bypassing difficult emotions?
Yes, and it delayed my healing
Sometimes, without realizing it
No, I confront emotions directly
I’m still learning what spiritual bypassing is
Your Turn To Share in The Comments
Have you ever used positivity, spirituality, religion, or “letting go” as a way to avoid confronting painful truths or difficult emotions?
About The Author: Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D.
Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. is an author, intuitive coach, spiritual storyteller, and former celebrity life coach known for her candid discussions on emotional healing, intuition, spirituality, relationships, trauma recovery, and authentic living.
With a background in law, psychology, spirituality, and personal transformation, Leslie blends practical wisdom with profound spiritual insight to help individuals reconnect with truth, courage, purpose, and inner peace.
Through her writing, media appearances, coaching, and storytelling, she encourages people to heal authentically while embracing both the beauty and complexity of the human experience.
Book a Free 10-Minute Coaching Consultation With Leslie
Ready to begin your healing journey, reconnect with your intuition, or gain clarity in your personal life?
Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. invites readers and listeners to book a FREE 10-minute coaching consultation to explore emotional healing, intuition, spirituality, relationships, life purpose, and personal growth.
Visit:www.lejardindamour.com
Invitation for Podcasters, YouTubers, and Television Producers
Are you looking for a compelling guest to discuss spirituality, emotional healing, intuition, relationships, women’s empowerment, trauma recovery, psychology, law, modern culture, or authentic living?
Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. is available for podcasts, YouTube interviews, television appearances, panels, and speaking engagements. Her thoughtful storytelling, spiritual insight, humor, and emotionally intelligent conversations create engaging and memorable discussions for audiences worldwide.
Media inquiries and booking requests can be submitted through:www.lejardindamour.com
Join the VIP Newsletter & Follow Daily Stories
Stay connected with Leslie Juvin-Acker, J.D. for exclusive stories, spiritual insights, healing discussions, behind-the-scenes content, inspiration, podcast updates, videos, events, and new writing releases.
Readers are encouraged to join the VIP Newsletter, like and subscribe to the YouTube channel @authorleslie, and follow the Instagram boutique account @universjardindamour for daily stories, inspiration, beauty, spirituality, lifestyle content, and updates from France.
Website: www.lejardindamour.com
YouTube: @authorlesliehttps://www.youtube.com/@Authorleslie
Instagram: @universjardindamour
Boutique / Visit Us:
Le Jardin d’Amour
21 bis Cour de la République
11400 Castelnaudary, France
Phone: 066-945-1767
#spiritualbypassing #spirituality #healingjourney #emotionalhealing #traumarecovery #shadowwork #mindfulness #selfawareness #innerhealing #mentalhealth #authenticliving #spiritualgrowth #intuition #toxicpositivity #healingtrauma #consciousliving #selfgrowth #spiritualawakening #emotionalintelligence #christconsciousness #wellnessjourney #personaldevelopment #narcissisticabuse #spiritualwellness #truthheals #womenempowerment #healingenergy #lesliejuvinacker #lejardindamour
Comments