A Few Words on Spiritual Bypassing and Influencer Culture…

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The topic of spiritual bypassing has been on my mind for a long time now. It’s one of the MANY reasons I’ve grown so allergic to social media over the past few years, and it’s also something that I’ve come across within the various “spiritual healing” communities that I’ve interacted with over the past decade or so. As a spiritual seeker myself who has attended many healing ceremonies both IRL and online, I’ve been dismayed at witnessing the breathtaking lack of deep healing work by some of the folks out there marketing themselves as spiritual healers, life coaches, and yes even psychotherapists and psychologists. This means they’re out there, serving you and me as “healers” when they’ve avoided dealing with their own unhealed wounds.
Is this who you want to be taking advice from?

Here’s a nugget of truth for you: everyone born on this planet is in need of healing of some sort at one point or another. Not one of us is immune. Yup. I realize that’s not a sexy statement. But it’s the truth.

Here’s another nugget: there are plenty of so-called “healers” out there who have avoided doing their own repair work, yet are really charismatic marketers with huge online followings. Why does this concern me so much? Well, when you’ve worked with as many clients as I have who’ve come to you in tears because the advice they’ve been given by their previous coach/therapist/healer is damaging, you sit up and take notice. I often find myself spending the first few sessions helping my clients unlearn a lot of what they had assumed was carefully curated advice by someone they trusted or viewed as a subject matter expert. And don’t even get me started on the heartbreaking stories of clients who’ve come to me needing to process psychological, emotional, physical and/or sexual traumas inflicted on them by the very unregulated but very popular healers they sought help from. I offer free consults before working with any client; and I’m continuously amazed/saddened that in all my years of practice, I’ve only ever had ONE potential client ask me the most important question of all: “Do you have your own therapist, Sandy?”
Of course the answer is HELLLLLLLLLLL YA!!!!

This past weekend, after listening to a few episodes of the “Kumbaya Confessional” podcast (which I HIGHLY recommend, as it touches on the problematic themes within what the podcaster terms as the “WooSphere”), I went down the rabbit hole of reviewing, with discernment, all the accounts and hashtags that I’d been following on my social media platforms. It’s an exercise I recommend everyone practice regularly. Energy is everywhere around us, and it’s important for each of us to be more mindful of the content we’re ingesting because each post, each photo, each video, each comment on each social media post leaves an energetic imprint on our mind, body and spirit, even if unconsciously.

As a trained mind-body-spirit helping professional, I felt compelled to address this topic head on. Over the past few years (and goodness, especially over the past year during Covid times!), I’ve noticed an explosion of social media posts that espouse toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing as veritable, one-size fits all solutions to ALL! YOUR!! PROBLEMS!!!! I’ve been watching the plethora of such distressing content, truth be told with the same level of dismay one would give to watching an accident about to happen in slow motion.

Truth bomb: there is a LOT of really positive-sounding, yet pithily trite advice from “influencers” right here on this platform as well as across all social media; a lot of them have millions of followers and are seemingly quite successful. Yes, I’m all for freedom of expression and creativity. The year 2020 brought me a lot of lessons; and one of them is that we are living in THE time for digital content creators to shine and thrive and offer their services! This is a good thing. These digital platforms we have access to afford us the opportunity to spread information far and wide (within mere seconds!) around this beautiful blue planet. It’s an exciting time for those of us who like to create and share! Especially those of us who see our roles as healers in service to humanity. However, stepping into such roles comes with a weight of responsibility because what you put out into the world will be the advice that dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people will read and accept as gospel for years to come. Because it’s preserved ON THE INTERNET. ForEVER. Anyone can create a pretty and profound-sounding yet pithy meme filled with toxic problematic advice that will not only NOT help you achieve your goals, but will keep you in stuckness because it encourages you to spiritually bypass your actual, real-life problems.

So. What to do, you ask?

I invite you to be more discerning with what you’re taking in online. And I encourage you to continuously ask yourself whether you are engaging in any toxic, spiritually bypassing behaviour yourself. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Are you discerning the content you’re ingesting, day after day? Scroll after scroll?

How is that content making you feel?

Is that content offering you temporary escapism while you continue ignoring what’s right in front of you?

Have you been ignoring dealing with your SELF? The self inside that houses both light AND shadow?

Be honest: have you been all “GOOD VIBES ONLY!” and “LOVE AND LIGHT!” while ignoring your Shadow inside?

Have you been avoiding doing your deep healing work because you’ve convinced yourself that taking advice from memes instead of checking-in with your Self, studying self-help books (and applying their teachings to your life) and/or working with a trained mental health professional to help guide you along your healing journey is the easier path?

Have you asked yourself who you’ve been taking advice from online (and what their qualifications are)?

Have you asked your guru/healer what efforts they’ve been taking to actively heal from their own wounds?

And after you’ve heard their answer, did you check in with your gut/intuition to discern whether their answer makes sense to you?

Most important of all, have you been hindering your personal growth by spiritually bypassing?

_{Sandy Kiaizadeh is a Registered Psychotherapist, Life Coach and Spiritual Healer at Toronto’s Mindful Solutions Clinic. For more information about Sandy and her services, please visit http://www.mindfulsolutionsclinic.com.}

Are You Following Your Own Path, or Someone Else’s?

It’s not easy to find your way through the world. You might have interests that don’t coincide with the values of your parents or with those of western society. It’s important to remember that everyone is different, and while the status quo might work for the majority of the population, it doesn’t work for everyone.

To have a truly fulfilling life, you must live it on your own terms. There are plenty of forces willing to tell you what your path should be:

1. Parents. Your parents want you to be happy and successful. They love you, and they want you to thrive and blossom. Many of them may also like to be able to brag to their friends about their children. 🙂  Most parents tend to be practical in their advice. Just remember that you’d have a similar life to them if you always followed their advice. That might be good or bad. Keep in mind that you are not the same as your parents. You also have your own life to live. You owe it to yourself to live a life that’s right for YOU.
2. Educational system. The educational system wants to turn out productive people into society that conform to their ways of thinking. This might be great for society, but it might not always be in your best interests. What if you want to be a rockstar, or take a few years to travel and write a book, own an alpaca farm, or become a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka? Your school guidance counsellor might be less than supportive of such pursuits!
3. Society as a whole. We, in the Western world, live in a society that places a strong value on achievement, financial resources, and personal possessions. We’re supposed to get married to a “perfect” partner, have a few kids, and own a house in the suburbs. It’s natural to want to play that game because we’ve all been so deeply indoctrinated to view these as measures of a “successful” life, even if it doesn’t quite suit our true nature. It’s nice to have the admiration of society, our ego minds crave this type of recognition. But the type of life dictated by society isn’t alwaysa good fit for everyone. There are plenty of people that are highly successful by society’s criteria that are profoundly unhappy with how their lives turned out. 

Toronto Mindful Solutions Clinic

 

As you can see, plenty of people are willing to influence your choice of lifestyle and career. But it’s unlikely that their advice will be optimal for you all the time. Be an individual and find the path that works best for you. Find and follow your own path with these strategies:

1. Ask yourself what you really want to do. Don’t say that you don’t know, because you do know. You’re just afraid to allow it to see the light of day. You might be concerned what others think, or you might be afraid that you’re not capable of doing it. Deep down, if you turned inward and listened to the whispers in your heart, you know what you want. Ask yourself what you would do if you could do anything, and then listen to the answer.
2. Decide that you’re going to follow your path. One of the biggest obstacles to success is failing to make a true decision. A decision only occurs when you shut yourself off to other possibilities. If you frequently change your mind, you’re not making true decisions.
3. Make a plan. Rome wasn’t built in a day. So set up a schedule of daily tasks that will bring you closer to living the life that you have chosen. In doing so, you’re practically guaranteed success provided you don’t give up.

Your life is your responsibility. If you find yourself stuck living someone else’s definition of success, you’ll find yourself unhappy. The people that influenced you to live this way will be off living their own best lives. Take control of your destiny and find your own path. Your life will be more interesting, more satisfying, and uniquely your own!

7 Steps to Banishing a Limiting Belief

Limiting beliefs are dysfunctional ideas/beliefs that we make up about ourselves, others and the world around us. Like the name suggests, they inhibit and hold us back from positive growth. We all have them, to varying extents, but the good news is that there are ways to banish them for good. Ready? Here we go:

7 Steps To Banishing A Limiting Belief – Toronto Mindful Solutions Clinic

How Does Getting Psychotherapy Help?

Since psychotherapy (also known as counselling) is a rather misunderstood concept (not to mention often steeped in stigma), the suggestion that you see a therapist can be scary.

You may perceive getting therapy to mean that there’s something wrong with you. But this isn’t the case at all! While it may not be for everyone, counselling can be beneficial to most people at challenging points in their lives.

Although it’s important to recognize that therapy is not a panacea, it makes a difference every day in thousands of lives across the world. If you find that you have uncomfortable feelings of “stuckness” in your life, you may very well benefit from this working with a psychotherapist.

Consider these ways that therapy can help you:

1. Get an objective viewpoint: Counseling allows the opportunity to talk about your current challenges with someone who’s trained, impartial and objective. Open communication with your friends and loved ones is usually a good idea. However, there are times when you might find it more comforting and safe to share your feelings, innermost thoughts, and worries with a therapist.
2. Clarify your feelings: Many times, people begin therapy feeling confused and not really able to identify their emotions. A good therapist can assist you in recognizing your feelings. The therapeutic process can help you explore particularly troubling emotions and resolve them.
3. Learn to appropriately communicate: Being able to share honest, genuine feelings using more effective communication can enrich your relationships and help you succeed in your life. Once you learn to pay more attention to your feelings and share them with others, you’ll get more of what you want from life, whatever that may be. Most importantly, your life is more fulfilling when you live based on how you truly feel.
4. Get stress-relief: How many times do you have an opportunity to say whatever you want however you want with no repercussions later? It’s possible to liberate yourself from psychological pain by talking with a therapist. Therapy is a safe place to vent your negative feelings. Whether you’re feeling scared, hurt, angry, lonely, confused, stuck or other negative feelings, you can share it with your therapist, take a load off your chest, and gain clarity. For many, therapy is a sanctuary when they’re feeling overwhelmed with negativity in their life. This makes counselling a great stress reliever!
5. It’s all about you: When you go to therapy, the session is focused on your benefit. Your time with a psychotherapist is all about you. You can say whatever you want, and you won’t ever have to worry about being judged by the therapist, as they are trained to keep their personal feelings out of it.
6. Gain valuable insights: When you talk about yourself with someone who’s non-judgmental and objective, you’re truly tuned in to the moment and what you’re saying. Therapy provides a chance for you to hear yourself talk and share your own personal struggles. It may sound unusual, but people in counselling frequently have “a-ha” moments about something they shared. Your therapist will ask questions which encourage you to examine your current situation more thoroughly. After all, human difficulties are complex. Through this process, you can discover your motives and learn to understand yourself better. Developing insight and awareness into your feelings empowers you to set priorities about what’s most important to you and make choices that enable you to live the life you truly seek.
7. Bring out your strengths: With therapy, you can develop or gain confidence in your capacity to live a healthy, fulfilling life, while learning more about what makes you tick, and how to harness your strengths.

Simply put, working with a therapist can be one of the most profound gifts you can ever give yourself. Most likely, you’ll experience less stress, feel more satisfied and contented with your life after participating in counselling. If you find yourself struggling emotionally, remind yourself that therapy can help. Tell yourself that therapy is a crucial component of your self-care plan. And then commit to doing the work!