Spiritual Bypassing: When Positivity Becomes Toxic

Do you find affirmations and positive mantras helpful? Personally, I find the practice of gratitude to be life-changing. But with everything there has to be balance. If you never face anything, and instead use positive mantras throughout each day whenever you face adversity and bad feelings, well, that's not reality.

I once heard about the "rule of three". One-third of time, things will be great. Another third will be ok, so-so kind of days, and the remaining third will be hard. This balance is normal. If it's hard more than one-third of the time, then something is wrong. If everything feels too good all the time, it may mean you're avoiding challenges or not being honest with yourself. This isn't normal either.

I have fallen into the positivity trap before, where I am using affirmations as an emergency help line, because I was resisting the present uncomfortable feeling of confrontation and accountability. It is uncomfortable to be shown how you are wrong, or how your unconscious actions are affecting others. Fear can also put you into a mental spiral. It's better to breathe and look at the fear, then trying to use affirmations as a way to escape or disassociate from confronting the fear.

I remember sitting in the principal's office for my child, overwhelmed by fear and anticipation of what it could be about. Fear took over and I was using gratitude affirmations like a lifeline because the waiting was uncomfortable. It only made things worse because the affirmations came from a place of panic and overwhelm.

It turned out to be an important conversation, but not in the way I had anticipated. I let that anticipation override my entire nervous system. Another approach would have been to breathe and trust that things were going to be okay. There was no reason or previous signs to indicate the worst that my mind could conjure.

My most important lessons and growth have been after an embarrassing situation where I have had to face myself and take accountability. There is a balance to not beating yourself up for what you did while you were trapped in survival mode. And taking accountability to damage that was caused along the way, and making an honest endeavor to correct those unhealthy reactions.

While positivity has its place, it's equally important to confront the less pleasant aspects of ourselves, as Carl Jung's shadow theory suggests. In short, you can't positively affirm yourself out of a bad situation. You must confront yourself; including your shadow. Carl Jung who founded the school of analytical psychology believed that a person had to learn to integrate their shadow self.

Their "Shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors...If is has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that in his shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc" [CW9 paras 422 &423].

Our shadow is not only all of the things that we have shoved down and don't like about ourselves, it's also part of our defense mechanisms and basic instincts. It can be your ego trying to protect you from change. After all, familiarity often feels safer than the uncertainty of the unknown.

One benefit to shadow work is being able to recognize your triggers. You are able to see what things get you riled, and can address the situation before it gets out of hand. In a way, you can get to the point where your triggers become something you appreciate. When you recognize them right away, they don't need to be so loud and inconvenient.

You can even get to a point where you sit back and observe your feelings, before you react. This space allows you to choose how you want to respond vs reacting and then apologizing for your behavior or outburst after the fact.

Life is filled with illusions. The biggest illusion is that we have control over anything other than ourselves. The one thing we do have control over, is the one thing that gets rarely practiced, let alone mastered. The only control we have in this world, is the control over the way we choose to respond over any given moment or situation. I think karma is being a prisoner to your reactions. To break that cycle you have to be able to slow down, breathe, and choose how you wish to respond.

I think that there is a use for positivity, but it has it's appropriate time and place. Positivity can't be used as a bandage to avoid unpleasant feelings or uncomfortable moments.  It's in facing those uncomfortable moments that we have the greatest growth.