How Can You Help?
Is Someone You Love Spiritual Bypassing?
It can be painful to watch someone you care about slip into spiritual bypassing. You may see them avoiding life, relationships, or their own emotions, and you wonder how to reach them without pushing them away.
People who fall into spiritual bypassing are usually not trying to harm anyone — they are often just protecting themselves from pain they don’t yet know how to face.
Remembering this can make it easier to meet them with patience, compassion, and healthy boundaries.
Keep in mind that what you can do is offer support, but you cannot change or turn someone around for them.
Stay open and empathetic, while also taking good care of yourself and your own boundaries along the way.
What to Do?
Listen with empathy
Let them feel heard before offering any perspective. It’s very common in spiritual communities to isolate people by telling them that the outside world doesn’t understand them. So when you make an effort to understand their new beliefs it is more likely to create an atmosphere of trust.
Ask open-ended questions, show curiosity
Use invitations instead of challenges. For example “How do you really feel about that?” instead of judging like “You’re avoiding your feelings.”). Curiosity opens the door to self-reflection. Judgment closes it.
Validate their intention
Most bypassing comes from sincerely wanting to heal, grow, and belong. Recognise that they're making an effort to e.g. heal, help people, connect with something bigger and/or find a new way of life. This will also help you understand and handle the situation in a more authentic and honest way. And it helps them feel safe instead of attacked.
Encourage grounding
Gently remind them of simple, real-life actions: talking to someone outside their spiritual bubble, taking small steps towards their goals, engaging with art, nature, or daily routines etc.
Share your own experience
Relate what they’re going through to your own story and share your own learnings with them. Think of something in your life that you overcame that might be helpful. Sharing personal stories connects people (“I noticed I used to avoid my sadness, until I…”). It reduces defensiveness and reopens the human connection that bypassing tends to shut down.
Allow yourself to have your own perspective
You don’t need to abandon your beliefs to keep peace — but you also don’t need to debate. Stay true to your own beliefs and life experience. Keep the balance of not walking on eggshells but also not confronting them harshly. Constructive feedback can be a turning point, also on a subconscious level.
Allow yourself to have your own perspective
You don’t need to abandon your beliefs to keep peace — but you also don’t need to debate. Stay true to your own beliefs and life experience. Keep the balance of not walking on eggshells but also not confronting them harshly. Constructive feedback can be a turning point, also on a subconscious level.
Offer resources only when appropriate and without pressure
Books, therapy, workshops can be helpful if they are offered respectfully and even better if from your personal experience. It should be sources you know, otherwise it's just information overload that might not even fit and could make it worse.
Stay connected
Isolation can deepen bypassing, so your presence matters. But also watch out for yourself to not burn out. Don’t take on the the responsibility of healing them yourself.
Acknowledge the limitations of your skills
If you realize you’re not reach the person and you feel worried, it might be necessary to seek professional help. If they are threatening self-harm or suicide, use emergency services because their life is in danger so helping in that case is outside of your skillset. They need immediate professional help.
Gently include their wider support system
If possible, sensitively inform their friends or loved ones about what’s going on so they understand what this person needs (and what not to do). You can share this website with them to help them understand and deal with it in a more sensitive way. Please don’t do an intervention party and stick to the do’s and don’ts above.
Share your feelings
about what you are observing or experiencing without being judgemental. Instead ask follow up questions such as “Does that make sense to you? How do you feel about that?”.
The other person might already have doubts but is judging him-/herself for doubting. A small honest observation or input from an outside perspective might help the other person to shift perspective too.
What Not to Do?
Don’t ridicule or mock their beliefs, even if they sound extreme.
Even if their worldview sounds extreme or irrational, laughing at it or dismissing it will only push them further into isolation — and deeper into the bypassing pattern.
Don’t try to “debunk” everything
– arguing rarely helps and can push them deeper into bypassing. In these states, the rational brain isn’t on.
Don’t diagnose or label them
– Saying “you’re bypassing,” “you’re in a cult,” “you’re brainwashed” may be accurate intellectually but emotionally feels like an attack. It causes shame, defensiveness, or further withdrawal instead of reflection.
Don’t take over their process
You can support, but they need to arrive at the insight themselves. You cannot “fix” or wake someone up. Your role is to stay connected, supportive, and grounded — not to carry their transformation for them.
Don’t enable harmful patterns
Support doesn’t mean agreeing to everything. e.g. going along with toxic positivity or justifying harmful behavior as “spiritual” just to keep them in your circle at any cost. That only deepens the cycle for both of you.
Don’t cut them off too quickly (unless the relationships has turned abusive)
Gentle presence is more effective than confrontation. Disconnection from their non-spiritual life can make bypassing more appealing because the community becomes their only source of belonging.
Don’t betray your own boundaries to keep the peace
You can be kind without being compliant. If something crosses your values, ethics, or physical/emotional safety, you are not obligated to participate.
HOW TO HELP YOURSELF
WHILE HELPING SOMEONE THROUGH THIS
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Seek professional help for yourself – it’s not a sign of weakness. Acknowledging this can be a though topic and working with a mental health professional can give you a more healthy perspective and coping skills to handle the situation.
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Acknowledge the helplessness without blaming yourself – You don't have to solve it for them (and in most cases you cannot). You can offer care, grounding, and connection, but you cannot control another person’s beliefs or timing. It’s okay to feel frustrated, sad, scared, or helpless — those feelings make you human, not inadequate.
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Give it time and patience — these phases usually soften. If you feel like you’re not able to reach the person right now, in most cases this phase will pass and maybe a while later they’ll be more open. Your steady presence matters more than “getting through” today.
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Remember: you are not responsible for the outcome. If you’ve done everything you could do in a healthy way, know that you’re good enough and you’ve already done a lot.