REAL WORK TAKES TIME

If done incorrectly, emotional sobriety can resemble what’s called ‘spiritual bypassing’. This is using ‘spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal emotional “unfinished business”, to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings and developmental tasks, all in the name of enlightenment’, wrote John Welwood, the psychotherapist who coined the term. This could show up as advice like ‘all you need is love’ or ‘yoga changed my life; you just need a consistent practice’. ‘There’s this marketing idea that if you meditate long enough, go to yoga, take this green juice, you will overcome the human condition,’ says psychologist Ingrid Clayton, author (as Ingrid Mathieu) of Recovering Spirituality: Achieving Emotional Sobriety in

Your Spiritual Practice. But that’s not the case. You have to ‘do the emotional work while also having a spiritual experience and support’, says Shari Hampton, a recovery and life coach. ‘But you can’t skirt around the work.’ If your gut feels like what you’re doing or what someone is advising is oversimplifying the matter, then that’s probably spiritual bypassing, not sobriety. Good to know.