Good Vibes Only Is Toxic - How To Avoid Spiritual Bypassing

One of the reasons so many people struggle with trying to be happy all the time and only allowing high vibe emotions is that its not possible to do. When we try to do something impossible, mind becomes frustrated and puts more energy into it, hoping that'll fix it, and because it's impossible mind becomes stuck in this loop. If you've been feeling like you can't just be happy, its likely because you've been operating under this paradigm.

Emotions are an all or nothing game, either they're all allowed or nothing comes through. So many of my clients come to me disembodied (shut down emotionally) because they've been burying unpleasant emotions, and part of their healing is to become embodied (present in their body aka feeling emotions). I discuss why so much spiritual bypassing is happening, how it's creating suffering and a way of thinking about emotions that is much more useful if we want to be free.

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What Is Spiritual Bypassing & Toxic Positivity?

"Sorry babe, but I just can't handle any negativity right now. Love and light" is spiritual bypassing / toxic positivity, and it's become more popular with the rise of pop psychology. While I'm all for knowing how much you can handle and setting boundaries around your energy, there's a helpful way to do that without invalidating the person you're with or avoiding unpleasant emotions.

Why Do We Have Emotions?

Emotions play a crucial role in our lives, providing valuable insights into ourselves and our experiences and letting us know how subconscious and our nervous system is processing data. However, many people tend to suppress or ignore unpleasant emotions, and while I get the logic in that practice, it doesn't work and results in people avoiding a lot of life - hence spiritual bypassing. In practice, it just doesn't work. While I'm not suggesting that we allow ourselves to drown or wallow in turmoil, it's not helpful to ignore, shove down or run away from emotions either. Life is meant to be experienced, humans are meant to experience life emotionally. To cut yourself off from negative emotions is to cut yourself off from life. Looking through this lens, the value of acknowledging and feeling all emotions, both positive and negative, is useful. This article will delve into the key factors that impact understanding and accepting emotions for personal growth, explore the tradeoffs involved in balancing different factors, and highlight the challenges associated with different approaches.

The concept of "good vibes only" has gained popularity in recent years, promoting the idea that one should only focus on positive emotions and avoid anything that's deemed negative. However, this mindset is misleading and harmful. All emotions have a purpose and ideally, we accept all of them with grace and an open door. Emotions provide valuable information and insights into our inner selves and the world around us. By blocking or denying certain emotions, we cut ourselves off from a powerful source of wisdom – our own bodies and subconscious. Think of it like this, when you have an open window, all breezes come and go in their own time. But when that window is closed, nothing gets through. Our nervous systems are the same way, we experience everything life has to offer, or we experience nothing. It's not possible to pick and choose which emotions we feel, which is why spiritual bypassing creates miserable humans. If we aren't open to everything, we're closed to everything - including joy, love, gratitude.

Yes, Painful Emotions Are Painful

Suppressing emotions can lead to self-gaslighting, where we deny our own reality and human experience. It disconnects us from our actual feelings and prevents us from fully understanding ourselves. It's much more useful to allow emotions to come and go naturally, without judgment or avoidance. The Buddhists say that pain in inevitable, but suffering is optional. The premise of this saying is that while painful experiences will happen as long as we're alive, when we observe, allow, accept then suffering isn't present. While this is easier said than done of course, it is possible to experience pain without suffering. By feeling and acknowledging all emotions, we prevent them from getting trapped within us, leading to unresolved emotional baggage and a whole host of problems down the road.

The Consequences Of Avoiding Painful Emotions

Think of humans like pressure cookers, and emotions as energy (e-motion, energy in motion). When people run away from, shove down, avoid emotions, they can't be released which means that energy gets stored. And what happens to a pressure cooker when too much pressure builds up? It explodes. Much like humans, who "go from zero to 100 in the drop of a hat." Too much energy built up means the system is destabilized and fragile, but that's what happens when people don't allow their emotions to move through.

However, understanding and accepting emotions for personal growth is not without its challenges. Society often stigmatizes certain emotions, labeling them as "bad" or "negative." This moralistic programming can lead people to feel shame or guilt for experiencing these emotions. The moralistic thinking is part of the problem, labeling emotions as good or bad isn't beneficial or useful. Instead, let's think of emotions as valuable information about how we experience the world.

Open Those Windows, Love

Balancing different emotions can be a complex task. It requires you to navigate the full spectrum of human emotions, including anger, judgment, shame, and sadness. When people shut down and suppress their emotions, anger often becomes the dominant emotion, because anger is often the only emotion that can break through the wall that was created. By learning to surf the waves of emotions and allowing ourselves to feel them fully, we can avoid being trapped in a cycle of running away from our emotions. Instead, when the windows are open, everything comes and goes in it's own time and we remain balanced, regulated and flowing.

This is a skill that's learned either by watching people who are good at it, getting professional support or learning about nervous system regulation, emotional embodiment (the ability to experience emotions) and emotional regulation. With practice, you get better and the better you get the better you get. One easy way to get started is to check in with yourself throughout the day and ask "how am I feeling?" which will establish and strengthen your connection to your body and increase your ability to surf those emotional waves.

Tl;dr - understanding and accepting emotions is how people stay regulated and balanced. The body always tends towards equilibrium, as long as you allow body to do what it does.

Want me in your back pocket helping you surf those emotional waves? Sign up for my program Exhale & Release - where you can have me in your ear anytime, helping you navigate and clear unpleasant emotions so you can move forward feeling calm, free, light.