Client Portal
Book a Session

When Faith Is Used Against You: Understanding Spiritual Bypassing in Abusive Relationships

If you have found your way to this page, there is a good chance you are carrying something that is very difficult to name — not just because it is painful, but because the very tools you would normally use to process pain have been turned against you.

Your faith. Your theology. The language of love and sacrifice and forgiveness and grace.

What I want to talk about today is one of the most insidious dynamics I encounter in my work with women in destructive relationships — and one of the least talked about in both clinical and church settings. It is called spiritual bypassing, and if you have been living inside it, you may not yet have the language for what has been happening to you. I want to give you that language today.

Because naming something is the beginning of not being controlled by it anymore.

Why You Keep Scrolling — And What You’re Actually Hungry For

Something brought you here today. Maybe it was the title. Maybe it was a quiet pull you couldn’t quite name. But I want you to notice that something in you responded — and I don’t think that was an accident. That small movement toward something real? That’s the part of you that already knows something needs to change. And she’s been trying to get your attention for a while now.
Here’s what I keep seeing — not just culturally, but in the women who come to me after years of feeling like they’ve lost the thread of themselves. There’s this exhaustion underneath everything. And when you dig into it, what you find is this: they’ve been outsourcing their interior life for so long that they don’t know how to come home to themselves anymore.
I think a lot of us are there. Even if we wouldn’t say it that way.
So here’s the question I want to leave at the beginning of this piece, before we go anywhere else:
How much longer are you willing to stay lost?

What are safe relationships

Healing from abuse requires more than time—it requires safe relationships. Learn how to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy connections, and discover five key traits of safe people who support your growth, dignity, and emotional well-being.