Emotional Bypassing: when we don’t allow ourselves or others don’t allow us to fully process our negative feelings. And it’s always toxic for our recovery from change, loss, and grief.
There are times in culture where, for many reasons, pain goes unacknowledged; not always because it’s too painful, however frequent that’s the case.
For many reasons and in many situations it’s because there’s not the time and space available to speak therapeutically, and not everyone has that skill or passion.
But we do all feel we should say something to render the awkward silence less palpable.
Without the space and time or the skill and even the interest, we try to make something tangible of the intangible moment, never realising the potential harm we do.
Loss, grief, and trauma can’t be healed with nice sounding words.
A lot of the time the person we’re dealing with who’s in the pain of grief also has no idea what’s being said isn’t helpful. Often, they’ll go along with it. Except they’re met with a complete lack of support.
This might sound okay if they’re not looking for support, but many people are harmed by emotional bypassing when they’re just trying to get on with life. Triggering occurs worst when we least expect it, and of course that’s how triggering is such a shock.
At a common level of community, the ministry of pastoral support can so often have the image or the illusion of just that—that support has been given and therefore also has been received. Even when it hasn’t.
Much of the time we think about the support we’ve been given in the moment, and we’re satisfied. We don’t always discern that something was amiss; like when a pastoral worker might say, “You’ll be okay… it won’t always be this hard…” or some other flippant thing.
Oftentimes it occurs to us sometime later that what was said wasn’t helpful or was even inappropriate. We’re there stuck in the thought that something’s not quite right.
The key to being helpful when interacting with someone in pain is to say less and to simply be present more. This is called opening space for the other. If the other person who’s in pain wants to fill that space verbally, they can, and if they don’t want to, we’ll do no harm by not saying anything inappropriate.
The thing with culture is it moves so slowly in terms of correcting what might have somehow been considered okay 20 years ago.
Perhaps the fear in a bygone era was, “You can’t just say nothing; you’ve got to be able to say something. You know, something’s better than nothing.”
But actually nothing is okay if it’s all you’ve got. Nothing said, but with presence, is actually powerful support. By our actions we might say, “I can see how hard this is for you, and I’m with you,” without having to say it.
Christian culture is a bit like the husband who must fix everything. I’m not having a go at husbands, other than to say, much of the time men tend to want to fix things.
Grief is something you can’t fix.
The Christian worldview is that there’s victory in the resurrection, but that doesn’t always translate into victory over all our pain. Yet, it seems to be the default narrative—“are you living in the victory?” (“If not, why not?” can be the unspoken attitude.)
True biblical Christianity—Old Testament with New Testament—holds open the idea that lament is the explanation for those many things in life that can’t be fixed.
Pastoral care is counterintuitive, less is often more. More is gained from pastoral care that’s prepared to walk the lonely journey with a person in pain than to pretend that it can be fixed and, worse, easily at that.
But, of course, this is hard to do—to do what seems to be nothing. It doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything when we hold space for people. What’s required in doing this, however, is the fruit of the Spirit—gentleness, patience, kindness, and the like.
More good can be done with fewer words,
and the less advice the better.
Better support is given in being committed to walking with a person, but of course that takes a genuine commitment of people.
So we can see a lot of emotional bypassing is about moving people onward so they’re not sad anymore or for the convenience of the majority. But it never helps and only harms.
Proper spiritual care and friendship is about being with the other rather than doing things for them.
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