What Spiritual Bypassing Looks Like

A very tempting path that leads nowhere.

Kimberly Fosu
ZORA
Published in
5 min readApr 19, 2023

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(Photo: David)

When the pandemic happened, I saw it as an opportunity to dive deeper into my spirituality. I quit my 9–5 to become a seeker. I took every spiritual course, watched every spiritual video on YouTube, and read every book I could find on spirituality and each time I felt confident about my new life path.

With every course I completed, every video I watched till the end, and every book I finished reading, I felt like I was close to creating the life that I know I came here to live.

But I became burned out. Too burnt out to take another course, sit through another video or read another spiritual book that promised me something that was too far out of reach.

It became harder for me to ignore my weariness and utter disappointment. I needed to face the truth. I was using spirituality to avoid dealing with myself.

When I was feeling uncomfortable emotions, I would rush to YouTube to find a video that I knew would say exactly what I needed to hear. I was spiritually bypassing and I quickly realized that it was leading me nowhere.

Spiritual bypassing is when we use spirituality to avoid facing and dealing with emotional pain. It was a very tempting path to take until I realized it was doing me no…

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Kimberly Fosu
Kimberly Fosu

Written by Kimberly Fosu

Purpose coach focused on spirituality, faith, and inspiration.