080: The Harm of Spiritual Bypassing with Peridot Reed

Have you ever needed a hug but got a spiritual platitude instead?

In this episode, we discuss spiritual bypassing—what it is, how to identify it, and what to do when we’ve experienced it. I am joined by Peridot "Peri" Gilbert-Reed, Ph.D., a Licensed Professional Counselor and Registered Play Therapist. She has conducted extensive research on spiritual bypassing and shares her findings with us, along with several examples of what it sounds like. If you've experienced the intentional or unintentional harm of someone minimizing or demonizing your pain, listen in.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Peridot Gilbert-Reed, Ph.D., is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Registered Play Therapist as well as a supervisor in both areas. She received her Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology with a concentration in theology from Liberty University. Her research focuses on spiritual abuse and spiritual bypass (as received by another person). Her research, combined with her own lived experience with spiritual abuse, provides a unique lens into spiritual trauma and its impact. She is an adjunct professor for Liberty University.

Links & Resources 🔗 

Website | Instagram | Facebook

• 988 Crisis Hotline
• Wounding Words: A Phenomenological Study of How Individuals Experience Receiving Spiritual Bypass | Dissertation by Peridot Reed, 2023

• "Don't Spiritually Bypass Your Church-Hurt Neighbor" | Article by Peridot Reed with Christianity Today

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Episode Transcript 📄

Peridot Reed
So you have scripture, and then you have these religious ideas, spiritual mantras, where, again, we try to use that so that we don't feel depressed, so that we don't feel sad, and worried, and anxious, and lonely, and all the things that at some point we decided were bad. But no emotions are bad. No feelings are bad. They simply are. They have no moral value. So our feelings are ours to own, and we're to experience that.

Brian Lee
Hey, friends, welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. I'm an ordained pastor and spiritual abuse survivor, and I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why Broken to Beloved exists, and we can't do it alone. We are looking for 125 people to join our mission as a monthly donor. You can help make programs like this podcast possible by donating just $10 a month. Head to brokentobeloved.org/support, or just click the link in the show notes to donate today.

Today, we're talking about spiritual bypassing, what it is, how to identify it, and what to do when we've experienced it. Peridot Gilbert-Reed, PhD, is a licensed professional counselor and play therapist, as well as a supervisor in both areas. She received her doctor of philosophy in psychology with a concentration in theology from Liberty University. Her research focuses on spiritual abuse and spiritual bypassing. Her research, combined with our own lived experience with spiritual abuse, provides a unique lens into spiritual trauma and its impact. Now, here's my conversation with our new friend, Peri. Peri, welcome to the podcast.

Peridot Reed
Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Thank you Thank you for having me.

Brian Lee
Yeah, this is going to be so much fun. We were joking a little bit before we start recording about statistics and how much fun they are, and how much we enjoy other people who don't have to take those classes. You share a lot of statistics in your work and data about people leaving the church in part because of a famine of spiritual malnutrition, about the effects of spiritual bypassing, about trauma, about all these different topics. Tell us what it means for you when you talk... Because I have never heard anyone phrase it that way, a famine of spiritual malnutrition. Tell us about that.

Peridot Reed
When it comes to spiritual nourishment, there's different facets from which we receive that. We can receive that in our family of origin. We can receive that at the church, receive that in many ways. If we are accustomed to having little to eat, we won't know that there's more out there. And so a lot of times, we are only fed what the system gives us, and whether that be our family dynamic or we're in a church situation or anywhere. And that's the one thing, as we continue on, I'll express this a little bit more. When it comes to spiritual bypass, spiritual abuse, anywhere spirituality resides, this can happen. And so that can be in the church, that could be in the family, in schools, that could be in multiple places. So in the spiritual malnutrition, a lot of times people relate rely on, and I think this is what we're raised to do a lot of times, because at three, I don't know to go and look in scripture and go, Let me find out how I was created, right? So I'm relying on someone to tell me that. And so we're accustomed to doing that.

The average person on top of that does not have a theology degree. We're not just walking around everybody knowing how to study scripture from what angle to do that. And so we trust spiritual leaders in our life, whether that be family or teachers or whomever, to feed us that. And what happens sometimes is we are given either unhealthy food or we are given unhealthy elements. Also, sometimes because we are dependent upon that, we don't know that we have the ability to go in. So we feed ourselves little on that. And that's the one thing. Spiritual abuse, and any abuse, is not okay. But when we are dealing with an abuse dynamic, never, ever is that okay. But we also need to know that to heal from those things, we do have to take on responsibility to feed ourselves and to know what we're being fed.

Brian Lee
And I appreciate the generosity and the grace to just say we understand why people choose to leave.

Peridot Reed
Yeah, absolutely. We do.

Brian Lee
And I think there's so much of the spiritual abuse that happens because instead of owning our part in how we have pushed people out, we shift the blame onto the people leaving. So, well, you just want to go follow and do your own sin, or you just want whatever it is. And there's so much of that language that gets wrapped up in the way that you relate spiritual abuse and spiritual bypassing together. And I'm really excited to have this conversation because we've talked a lot about spiritual bypassing in passing here and there or as a comment or as an effect or a symptom of things, but never had a whole conversation just around it. And I think it's a phrase that people hear, and it's one of those like, I think I know what it means. I feel it, but I'm not sure how to define it or recognize it or know what to do with it when it happens to me. So help us understand, how do you define spiritual bypassing?

Peridot Reed
I love this topic. I'll pick, and I'll be happy to find that. I can't wait. There are two ways that this can be done. Spiritual bypass, as it had been studied previously, is how we do it on ourselves. In my new amount, spiritual bypass can be a coping skills. If I lose someone that I love, and I am struggling with that grieving process, what spiritual bypass does is I am a willing participant because I'm doing on myself. I may not be cognizant of what I'm doing, but I'm doing it on myself. And I am trying to bypass the psychological task of grieving so that I can be happy or I can experience positive emotions. So what that might sound like toward ourselves is, for instance, I lost my dad when I was nine. And so saying, I miss my dad, but I know he's in a better place, or I miss my dad, but God says that he he has a life abundant for me. Those things are true. My dad is 100 % in a better place in heaven and with Jesus. However, what was being done is that I'm going, I don't like the feeling that goes along with missing that.

I don't like the grieving. So I would rather come over here and focus on this excessive optimism, over spiritualizing something so that I don't have to feel that. Now, again, my new amounts, that helps us to overcome those really hard days. What happens, though, and what the research shows, is that often we get in that cycle of it. And so then we delay our grieving or we just never address it, period. And then we aren't facing the reality of the things that we need to overcome and all the steps that go along with grief. Now, the second way that it is defined is through my research, I uncovered that there is another way that spiritual bypass is done. And that is how we do it to each other. So, Brian, if you came to me and you said, Wow, I'm really missing my dad. And I said, wow, yeah, That's hard. Well, let's look at some scripture and let's see that he brings the broken hearted, and he binds the wounded, that he's called you to live life abundant. For you, who is not a willing participant in receiving that, You go, wait a second.

That doesn't feel good. I don't feel very heard. I feel dismissed. I feel like my grief isn't accepted. My sadness is not welcome. And then that turns into an unsafe place because you would not be able to come to me and find the comfort that you're seeking. So then I'm forcing you to bypass the psychological task that you need to complete to heal. I'm not being present with you in pain. And so that is what my research covered, is that spiritual bypass is happening. And it happens often in what I call a covert level. So nothing about what I just said would appear abusive. But if you came to me again, and what is abusive? It's a pattern or behavior, right? If you came to me again and again and again, and I keep doing the same thing again and again and again, you're eventually not going to come to me, and that's not going to feel safe. You also may internalize and go, Well, there must be something wrong with me because a phatic of praying did all of these things, and I'm still sad on that. So the research, a lot of people did not have a language for it.

And it felt so freeing to them to be able to say, And that's what it does, and that hurt. And so being present with someone in that pain of being able to use that language is so freeing for-Yeah. And then what the research, and we'll dive into this a little bit later, but it does intersect with spiritual abuse.

Brian Lee
Yeah, 100 %. Well, and I think we can appreciate the fact that in terms of language, because we talk about this all the time, that the framework that I tend to use is this idea that first we have to notice that something's off, then we give it that name. So we have language. It's like, Oh, my gosh, that's what I'm dealing with. Otherwise, we're just dealing with symptoms. And then we get to navigate and choose what do I want to do with this information. And the idea that the term spiritual bypassing was basically invented by John Wellwood in 1984, which in my brain is 20 years ago, but it's obviously a little longer than that. It's a fairly new term for a lot of people, so it makes sense why you wouldn't have heard about it before. We're not sharing this information to shame people even more and saying, Oh, well, you should have known that you were a spiritual bypass. It's like, No, we're trying to give you language and equip you with tools to recognize, Okay, This is what happened.

Peridot Reed
Yes.

Brian Lee
I love that you frame spiritual bypassing as a coping mechanism or a survival strategy that does actually help us for a short while or for short seasons.

Peridot Reed
Yes.

Brian Lee
But also, ultimately, because you share a story about how in moments or seasons of depression, it's like, as a survival strategy, I'm going to spiritually bypass. But then if or when the depression returns, I can see how that would be really damaging, especially for folks who might tie their identity to their well-being or drop into further shame and condemnation. It's like, Oh, I thought I had this fixed. I thought I was praying enough, or reading enough, for doing enough. And I must be wrong with... Like you're saying, there must be something wrong with me if the depression keeps coming back or if I still keep feeling grief about my dad or whatever it is. Help us understand how identifying and naming that act of spiritual bypassing, whether we're doing it to ourselves or whether we're having it done to us by other people as unwilling participants, as you say, how does that affect the way we see ourselves or see the people that we're interacting with?

Peridot Reed
Yes. So when we can recognize it on ourselves, I think we can take that step back and go, Okay, this is not just me failing at being a Christian. It's really, really hard when you fail to be a Christian, when you feel that, because then it's like, Where's God's grace in that? Where's the redemption and the sanctification? And when we experienced that, and again, in my own story, part of what brought about my research was my own experience. And although I had an experience of it done to me, there were times that I was implemented myning, spiritual bypass on myself. Again, I was taught that if you pray more, if you do this more, then things will get better. But Jesus says in this world, you will have trouble. Yes, he overcame the world, but he also said, you're going to have trouble. And so I'm often working with my clients to tell them that pain is not the absence of hard. It's not the absence of these different things. It says, even when I'm in pain, I can still pray. I can still do these things. I can still even hurt and be sad and scared.

And my God doesn't leave me on that. But what happens with spiritual Bible is we take that on, and then the shame sets in, and then more depression sets in, and then we just cycle downward. And this is where some people may express suicidal ideation because I'm doing all this and it's not getting better. I don't want to be anymore. And I'm just going to take a side note, if anyone is in that space, by all means, please seek help. You could do that through, of course, the Crisis Hotline, 988. But there's also a therapist in your area. I'm sure if you needed to reach out to me, I'd be happy to help find somebody in that area. But we do take that very seriously. Now, as it's done to someone, again, you're in the same element. Well, I'm praying more. She told me to pray more. I must be praying wrong. I must be not reading the right scripture. I must not be journaling alone. Then we even can't internalize that God is against us. And there is no scripture that says that. But when we're being told that time and time, when you must not be praying hard enough, have you tried praying this way?

Have you done whatever the list is that's been given? And so then again, we're internalizing that rather than saying, being able to recognize this, this isn't safe, this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel right, this doesn't model the character of Christ, that we wind up internalizing it and saying, Well, I must be that. I must be beyond help on there. And that's just not truth.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's really helpful. I love that you provide, again, all the data and the citations and stuff in the work. 1984, John Wellwood, right? So, Spiritual Bypassing: the employment of spiritual ideas, concepts, or activities as a means of evading or bypassing important psychological processes. Then you share from Whitfield three years later, The tendency to utilize spiritual goals to ignore or evade crucial human needs, emotions, and mental commitments. I think people hear that, and if we try to boil it down so it doesn't feel so clinical, it's the idea of using spiritual language to avoid dealing with the discomfort or pain of what we're actually facing. Does that sound right?

Peridot Reed
Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lee
It's helpful to recognize it just happens all the time.

Peridot Reed
Right. Whitfield did it in recovery literature. So you're dealing with those who are experiencing alcoholism or some type of addiction, and how difficult that must be for them to try to not feel the pain pain of what's leading them to the addiction. So they try to spiritualize, if I just work hard, if I just do this and this. And that's where you thought, Hey, we're missing, though, that you still have to work through the hard. That part is still necessary. Of course, from there, that is where Dr. Crick Cashwell, developed it in the faith of seeing, Hey, we do this to ourselves in faith systems on there as well. And again, bypassing the things that we don't want to feel, that maybe are just hard. Nobody wakes up going, It is a great day to grieve. Nobody. If I could find a way out of it, and our brain is built to survive, and we know that grief excites the back of the brain where our alarm system is, it's going to try to get out of grieving. That's why we have to make ourselves go, Okay, wait a second. God's going to allow me space for this.

But again, if we've always been taught that that's not acceptable, only positive emotions are acceptable. That's really hard to navigate sometimes.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and that's helpful. Thank you. Tell me what sounds more fun to you. I want to put some language around what spiritual bypassing sounds like. Yes. I'm intensely curious about this Jesse Fox spiritual bypass scale because recognizing that it's on a spectrum of it can be covert, it can be completely unintentional and still be happening and true, and it can be very malicious. It's like, I'm using this to manipulate you, to put you in your place, to dismiss your experience, whatever it is. Help us understand what does that scale sound and feel like or look like, what Give us some language for how it sounds when we're doing it or when it's being done to us.

Peridot Reed
Sure. When you think about, and I love that term scale because it is on a scale of this. If you're picturing a straight line and you've got two ends of the spectrum, so let's think of it on a continuum. And on one end, you have maybe where we do it to ourselves. And so Jesse Fox's scale, which has been validated in different countries in different ways. And so he did it based on how we do ourselves. So the scale will be for how you do it to yourself. That's what it will measure. And so it is going to be, I think one of the statements on there is on what we call a Likert scale, so like zero to five. Use scripture to develop positive feelings, maybe, or to no longer feel X, Y, and Z. So that is where we are using some scriptural element. And let's note this, too, in various religious frameworks, different ideologies or concepts are presented. So there are some who in their faith system would say, How are you today? Well, I'm blessed and highly favored. That's just what you say and what you do. And so whenever I talk about theological concepts or religious ideas, That's the type of stuff that I'm referencing.

So you have scripture, and then you have these religious ideas, spiritual mantras, where, again, we try to use that so that we don't feel depressed, so that we don't feel sad, and worried, and anxious, and lonely, and all the things that at some point we decided were bad. But no emotions are bad. No feelings are bad. They simply are. They have no moral value. So Our feelings are ours to own, and we're allowed to experience that. What happens maybe that becomes bad or in a moral value category is what we do with those. So if I'm angry, I'll punch you in the throat. That's bad, right? But overall, me just feeling that is not bad. So that's how we do it on this end, okay? Now, on the other end is how we would do it to each other. And so Jessie, box of scale does not cover this. I developed one based just lightly on his. I did not use it actually in my dissertation because it just wasn't necessary for the type of research that I did. But it is where if I come to you and let's say that But I'm in a relationship and I'm really struggling.

And let's say I'm married and I say, wow, my husband and I are really having a lot of conflict. And the person responds with, well, sometimes you just got to love them harder. And sometimes we just have to put our needs on the back burner while we really focus on this person. Okay, well, as the person who's expressing this, I'm like, so I have to dismiss myself. That's what I'm being encouraged to do in that moment is put all my feelings. And that doesn't mean, yes, at different times we have to give more in a relationship and just depending on different things. However, when it's that continuous thing, I still need to be validated. Well, that's really hard for you to go through. I wonder what we can do together to help you. Okay, that becomes a different scenario. Now I feel heard and seen. On the other end, though, when somebody is just telling you you need to love harder and remember the fruits of the spirit, and that's what we need to model, and love is not a clanging symbol, all the things, then I get bypassed. Then my feelings don't matter. And now I just have to shove them in a box and put them on the side, which is going to create a whole another issue.

Now, where we go in the middle, possibly, is that is where we're going to find maybe some of the coping skills. So when somebody first loses a loved one, saying to themselves, I know that they are no longer in pain. That is helpful. Long term, if it goes over to either side, it's not because we're sitting on extremes. But in the middle, that says, I can find comfort in knowing that my dad is no longer suffering from cancer on there. Now, again, I don't want to do this all throughout and just sit in that, I'm happy, you're happy, everything's fine, everybody's fine, because that doesn't allow me to experience the breath of emotions and different things that I need to go through, psychological elements that I need to go through so that I can heal. Does that make sense on that continuum?

Brian Lee
Yeah. So on the low end, we're doing it to ourselves, right? Just, Hey, let me force myself to be happy and put on a smile by reading the scripture, or remind myself to fear not, or whatever it is, right? And On the other end, we have these people who are doing it to us to minimize their own pain and discomfort, but in ways that may really, really harm us.

Peridot Reed
Yes.

Brian Lee
You, I think, provide a couple of other really practical examples of how this happens to us in our lives. When there's harm done in a response to people with mental health conditions, dealing with divorce, marital abuse, over-spiritualizing things you say, and how often the devil gets blamed.

Peridot Reed
Oh, my gosh.

Brian Lee
Or spiritual warfare for depression, schizophrenia, mental pain, or that it must be your sin, or like you said before, it must be spiritual warfare that you're dealing with this. And so no, don't leave your husband, even though he's completely unsafe and abusive and is hurt, harming you and children and just the environment that you're in. But you have to just work harder or pray for him or whatever it is. These These are all examples of spiritual bypassing.

Peridot Reed
Yes, they were all... And the research does show that many people who, and I want to say this statistic, I'm not looking right at it right now, but I want to say it was 49 %. It was a lot that said they chose to no longer attend because mental health was denized. Not okay.

Brian Lee
I think that was right at the beginning of the paper was that statistic.

Peridot Reed
Yeah. And it just is very, very hard. And you said it a minute ago, and it's something that when I'm working with clients, I try, when I'm explaining spiritual bypass, that often in my research, it shows this, too. Out of the 14 participants in my research, and it was phenomenal logical research. So I did interviews with these individuals and talk through their stories. So that's why there's not this huge amount. It wasn't just a survey that they filled out, like we were talking and engaging. But of the 14, Three of them said they believed that the act was both intentional as well as the harm was intentional, the person meant to do what they were doing. The others said that they believe the statements were intentional, that they truly believe that the individual truly believed what they were saying was truth. However, the harm was unintentional, that if individuals knew how that person received the information, that they would be upset or worried. Now, some, it was like 50/50. I could tell them that they still wouldn't have listened because that was their truth. And so, yes, a lot of times when we are using spiritual bypass towards someone, it is because we feel discomfort because it's benefiting us in some way.

When I'm sitting with someone grieving and I start giving them scripture or spiritual mantras or he's in a better place, all these different things, I have to really assess, is this how I feel better or am Am I really providing this person what they need? And a lot of times it's so I don't know what to do. I can't fix it. I'm not going to give this latitude because I don't know what to do. And that's not helpful. That's harmful. When it comes to knowing that, then when you come back to this section of people who are struggling with mental health, they didn't ask for this. You know, chemical imbalances in the brain. It could be numerous things that have caused a mental health condition. And when they are told that they are praying hard enough, that there's a demon of depression in them, and that's the language that is not unheard of, that is not helping them to heal. In fact, what it does is, and my research shows this as well, is that many decide not to seek help. Many decide not to do medication because then not only are they told that there's a demon of depression in them, if they go and seek out medication, their faith is strong enough.

So It's a no-win situation. In the divorce scenario for the woman, and I get on this because I hear often messages on forgiveness, and I know that we are called to forgive. There is no if, answer, but it's about that. But it is a process. It is not an overnight success. It is not something where today, if you did something to me, if it's mine, I'm sure I might be able to forgive it today and move forward, but that's more unlikely. So the bigger offenses are going to take long. You steal my bubble gum? I can get over that in a day. You hurt me, you betrayed me, that's going to take a whole lot longer. And that's one of the framework works that I did my research on is on betrayal of how spiritual abuse and spiritual bypass trauma, betrayal happens. And so then it navigate. It's a whole another level that we have to hear from on that. So with the woman who maybe just found out that their spouse or man who just found out their spouse has been cheating on them, and the pastor preaches a sermon on forgiveness without balancing that sermon of saying, Hey, look, forgiveness is a process.

It's going to take time. We still have to forgive. Well, that's one thing. But when you just say, hey, forgive 70 times seven, we don't let the sun go down on our route. That person who just got betrayed is like, okay, well, I guess I have to pretend like that didn't happen. And now I'm sinning because I'm still mad at my spouse for cheating on me. And that's not accurate either. So these are ways that spiritual bypass can happen to us, both intentionally and unintentionally. And then on that spectrum of being able to see how, again, to ourselves, even if the pastor is not directing it to us, how we internalize that can mean, Okay, well, I must be sinning because.

Brian Lee
Right. Based on how we interpret and internalize. I think it's helpful to hear that, or I guess I want people to hear, that whether it was or wasn't intentional, if you receive that harm, then that harm is valid.

Peridot Reed
Yes.

Brian Lee
So when we've experienced spiritual bypassing on behalf of ourself or others, intentionally or unintentionally, what do we do with it?

Peridot Reed
Yes. So And when we're doing it to ourselves, and that's such a great question that you ask, because I think a lot of times people go, okay, I'm doing that. Now what? Is when we're doing it to ourselves, we really have to pay attention to body, heart, mind. So I am always... I do this on myself, but I do this with my clients as well. You need to constantly be assessing, what is my body experiencing? What's my heart feeling? What's my brain thinking? Every one of those, each one of those is a storyteller. When our hearts are racing, When our jaws feel locked, when maybe our fist are bald, that's telling us something. So when we're sitting down and we're reading a four-hour Bible study, because by golly, if I just spend one more hour in it, maybe I'll get this depression gone. I need to pay attention to the tenseness that's in my body. I need to pay attention to the frustration that my chest, the tightness in my chest, that why do I keep reading the scripture and it's not getting any better? So acknowledging myself allows me to accept myself. If I never acknowledge that I'm experiencing this, how in the world can I overcome it?

And so then when I say, well, This hurts. Okay, now I'm validating myself. We often look to others to validate us. We also have to learn to validate ourselves and be able to say what I'm going through is a hard thing. Then we're adding language to that. Now we're going to go to what does my heart feel? It feels bitter, it feels frustrated, it feels depressed, it feels all these different things. Now I'm going to go to my thought processes. What do I think about this? I feel like it's my fault. I feel like this is responsible and all these different things. Now I need to take that step back and tell myself truth, because at no point in time, I may have a broken spirit, but I am not broken. I am not shattered pieces to be thrown away. I am a child of God, and I know that, yes, I'm going to go through difficult things, and now I'm just going to seek God in my hurt. Help me. That releases the pressure of having to put on, as you were saying earlier your this mask and go out and go, everything's fine.

No, it's not fine. And now you have a language. Now you can know, okay, I'm spiritually bypassing myself right now. I need to take a step back. And then there are calming exercises that you can do, grounding work like anchoring, grounding as you call out the things in front of you, anchoring, literally anchoring yourself to an object and then doing the same thing. Those are different things there. When it is done toward us, this is where boundaries come in. I love I've banned. And I have no problem setting them because I didn't set them early on. And that kept me in a... It wasn't my fault. I'm not saying that, but it did keep me in a religious abuse cycle because I didn't know I had the ability or the right to sit down. But once I realized I did, I could say, I recognize that that is true for you. That is not true for me. And I would appreciate either not using that scripture, that idea, or whatever right now. We need to let others know that where we are in our space. And I recognize that if you're going to meet one person one time, you may just be like, okay, they don't know anything, but I'm not going to be dealing with it.

You may not want to set a boundary. Okay, cool. But I had a lot of people. There were three places in my research that came up where spiritual Bible has occurred. It occurred in church, it occurred at work, and it occurred at home. Well, when I'm a child, I don't get to just say, Well, I am leaving and going somewhere else, right? Because I'm here and this is my home. If it's my spouse that's doing it, I can't just up and go, right? But I can say, Hey, And I see this a lot with spouses who are working through betrayal, that the spouse, possibly, that committed the act of betrayal is getting healthier or appears to be getting healthier and is really into the word and then turns to the spouse that has been betrayed and says, Hey, look, I found this scripture, and it's making me feel so much better. It'll make you feel better, too. And really what it does to the The other person is go, Did you even know I'm in pain today? So again, I feel dismissed. I feel disregarded, all these different things. And so setting boundaries is going to be critical.

You're not responsible for how the other person receives your boundary, but you are responsible for how you deliver it. So we are still responsible for doing so in a way that is kind, but that is firm. That can say that that's not acceptable for me. And I appreciate you not saying that or something to that effect. So boundaries is one. And then again, if you are in an environment where you can leave, sometimes you just have to step away. Sometimes you do have to find a new church. Sometimes you do have to find a new group of friends. And that will come into its own grieving process as well. But it is hard to heal in the same environment that hurt you. Sometimes we have to, but it is harder.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. For people who aren't comfortable with setting those boundaries, or like you're saying, don't know how because they've never been given the permission to do so before or never felt the agency to do it, what's a good step one for them?

Peridot Reed
A lot I love that. I love that. I use the ACT method. It was funny. I'm a registered play therapist as well, and it was actually something I learned in play therapy. I often tell people, the more I learn about children, the more I learn about adults. And so this model has helped me across the board in many situations, but I use it in my own personal life.

So A is acknowledge feelings, wishes of wants. So I can say to that person, I know you're trying to help me. Acknowledging that towards the person who's maybe exacting the spiritual bypass. Even for myself, I could say, I know I'm not wanting to be in pain right now. The C can mean two different things. The C can be communicate a limit. So I recognize you're trying to be kind and trying to be helpful. That is not helpful for me. So then we set the limit. We let them know this isn't working. For myself, I may have to co-regulate. I may have to ask somebody to help me work through this. And then the T is think of an alternative. That could look like, I recognize you're trying to be helpful. That's not helpful for me. Maybe we can try again later, or maybe we can revisit this at another time. Or do you have a recommendation for a therapist I could talk to? Something to that effect.

If we're doing co-regulation, it may be, hey, what can we do together to help you right now? If it's I may just recognize, what do I need right now to help calm my body, heart, and mind? I may need to go for a walk. I may need to take some deep breaths, those different things. But I really try to stick with that ACT method. Number one, if I'm having to confront someone, it lowers conflict. If I just come right out to you and go, I can't believe you said that to me, that's not going to go well. But if I can at least do the A part, that helps. But if you're listening to this and you recognize, and I had to recognize this in my own life because I was in ministry as well, I have done spiritual bypass to other people. Then I have to go, I have to acknowledge that for myself that I've hurt somebody.

And I can't say, I want you to know that I acknowledge that that wasn't helpful for you. And I want to apologize for that. And we move forward. And then giving that person the autonomy and choice for what they want those next steps to be.

Brian Lee
Rather than forcing them to forgive us on the spot.

Peridot Reed
Exactly. Let's understand, we're going to go down the forgiveness route. One thing is reconciliation is not required. So we can both forgive and not reenter the relationship. So if you're in that dynamic of, well, God said to forgive and forgive. No, that's not scriptural in there. And sometimes the abuse is continuing, and that person isn't healthy, and I don't need to be in that relationship and reconciled.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's helpful. You tie spiritual bypassing with spiritual abuse, and that they're not mutually dependent on each other. You can have one without the other. Where is that line?

Peridot Reed
Yes. So in my region, research, there is a graph that I have. And basically what I did was the last question of my research has never asked, and that is, does spiritual abuse intersect with Or excuse me, does spiritual bypass intersect with spiritual abuse? And so what I did was from the interviews, use the data there to create this graph. And I used the symptoms that were found both in PTSD literature as well as spiritual bypass, or excuse me, spiritual abuse literature, and then documented the language used from recipients when they describe their experience and documented it. And it was pretty powerful. So hypervigilance Is one, emotional dysregulation, of course, depression, anxiety, some suicidal ideation, self-harm, and almost all of them, with an exception of insomnia, at least one participant, if not three or more, had their symbol. And so because they were constantly being spiritually bypassed, again, if you walk away going, that doesn't feel right. And that was my experience as I was being told that, okay, these group of people don't like you or aren't getting along with you, but you're the problem. Maybe you need to be kinder. Maybe you need to be this.

Maybe you need to be that. And of course, scripture being involved. And I'm like, okay, well, what scripture is involved? So it must be true. And this is a Christian that's telling me this. So it was very hard to name and identify what it did internally was make me very rigid because now it's like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to say? So I'm hyper vigilant as well. Additionally, the more I tried, the more backlash I got. And so then I'm doing it wrong. I felt depressed. I felt anxious. And then it just got to the point where every day I'm going home crying because it's never enough, never enough. And that is what participants also conveyed. Of course, I never share my story with the participants. They were just sharing their story with me. But yes, whenever it's getting into that place, again, we're having, and it's being done continually. And abuse would say in the APA, American Psychological Association, does say that when there's that pattern of abuse, emotionally, mentally, physically, those type of things that abuse has occurred. However, I do recognize that abuse can happen just one time, and it's still abuse.

To bypass, what happens is it's on that covert level. And if somebody is truly being unintentional, that may not happen every time. But what we see is that it was happening continually. Every time anxiety was brought up, then do not be anxious for anything, but in everything, by fear of supplication, bring your request to the Lord. One participant was told she was just trying to make trouble. Another was told, Okay, well, if you're going to ask questions about why we have dinosaurs, What demon is inside of you?

Brian Lee
Right.

Peridot Reed
That's, of course, that's pretty hardcore. We could probably go spiritual abuse, but also spiritual bypass. It produce the hypervigilance. It produce the suicidal ideation, just many different components. And that's where that intersection of spiritual abuse. And that's why when people ask me, what is spiritual abuse? I put spiritual bypass as a part of the manipulation and the coercion. It is a spiritual gaslighting.

Brian Lee
Yeah.

Peridot Reed
Yeah.

Brian Lee
Because we're the ones made to feel crazy for feeling the way we do it.

Peridot Reed
Exactly. Exactly. That's it. That's it.

Brian Lee
So as we wrap up, help the people who are realizing that they've experienced spiritual bypassing. How do we move forward from here? What do we do with it? What do we do with this knowledge?

Peridot Reed
Yes. And so if you're doing it to yourself, give yourself some grace. There's a reason that you are doing it. That's good. It is not, again, most of us don't wake up wanting the things, the hard things that we're going through. So it is a coping mechanism. But ask yourself this, is there something else that I can do that allows me to hold two truths? The truth that I'm hurting and I need to work through this. So if we want healing, the healing that we're ultimately going for, we have to merge both of those. And so giving yourself some grace and some compassion to know why you did it, and now going, I'm going to have to sit in this. So to sit in it, to be able to hold those two truths, sometimes we have to ask a friend to help us. We have to have some type of support. Sometimes it's a therapist, sometimes Sometimes it is implementing different tools, but it is having additional support, and that is okay. Guess what? It is okay to have Jesus and a therapist, too. We all work together for that. As far as it happening to you, you have a language now.

You now can say to the person who is hurting you, Hey, I don't know if you're realizing this or not, but this is spiritual bypass. Educate them in it. They literally may not know that there is language for this. And as Brian, you mentioned earlier, spiritual bypass is new. And in 1991, spiritual abuse is not that old, right? It was just introduced in 1991. So these causes Concepts are still new, but a spiritual bypass, especially, is new. Like I said, my research is the novel research and how we do it to each other. So educate the person. And then you're going to, as best you can, again, giving yourself grace and compassion, try Try to set a boundary with that person and let them know what's helpful for you and what is not. You are allowed to speak your needs. And often when we are spiritually bypassed and we experience spiritual abuse, our Our voice and our choice is lost, and we need to exercise that muscle to strengthen it. It doesn't mean that we aren't going to sometimes get some backlash, that we aren't sometimes going to maybe be ridiculed for that, maybe even lose relationships over that.

However, your healthiness, spiritually, mentally, physically, is very important. And so if something is in your life that is not allowing you to reach healthiness, you need to ask yourself, Is this what I really want from us?

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's really helpful. Thank you, Peri. If people want to find or connect with you, where can they go?

Peridot Reed
Yeah, they can go to peridotreed.com, and that's P-E-R-I-D-O-T-R-E-E-D dot com. And I have a website there. It has resources, blogs, multiple different things that you can look at. I also have Instagram and Facebook, and you can look me up there as well.

Brian Lee
Great. Peri, thanks so much for spending the time with us. It's been such a helpful conversation.

Peridot Reed
Yes. Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lee
What a helpful and informative conversation. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to follow Peri and say thanks for being on the show. You can find links and all the things in the show notes. Subscribe or follow to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review or share with your friends. It really helps us to grow and continue providing quality content for you.

A special thank you to our listeners who make the show possible through their financial support. If you find the show valuable, consider donating today at the link in the show notes. This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and postproduction by Lisa Carnegis.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness. Together, I'll see you next time.