Emotional Bypassing - Do your insides match your outsides?

There’s a surprising way that you might be abandoning yourself, and you probably don’t even know you’re doing it

It’s called emotional bypassing, and if you've got this habit, it's playing a significant part in why you feel stuck in "meh-ville" of dissatisfaction AND why you find yourself feeling powerless in getting your relationships to change!

Emotional bypassing occurs when we subconsciously switch an emotion we’re not comfortable experiencing, for another more “acceptable” emotion. 

Whether an emotion is “acceptable” or “unacceptable”  will depend on how you were programmed as a child.

For example, if you were criticized as a child for feeling sad, maybe made to feel silly for crying, or worse, threatened for your sadness (“I’ll give you something to cry about!”) You may have become afraid of your own sadness. 

To keep yourself “safe” from feeling sad, you learned to automatically (unconsciously) switch to a less scary feeling whenever sadness naturally arose.

Now as an adult, when sadness presents, you may bypass it by getting angry, which replaces the scary feeling with a sense of power.

On the flip side of that, if you were shamed for getting angry as a kid, you may have become an adult who automatically feels guilty whenever they feel angry.

This ability to bypass “dangerous” feelings was BRILLIANT for keeping us in attachment to our caregivers, who we relied on for our survival.

But once past the legitimate need for dependency, this brilliance becomes a burden; a major source of pain, and a MASSIVE power leak in midlife!

For starters, understand that emotions are the messengers of needs, and needs drive behaviors. 

Behavior that’s based on a secondary emotion, as opposed to my authentic emotion, is unlikely to give me what REALLY need.

If sadness arises, it’s likely that I need connection, support, reassurance, guidance, love. 

But if I bypass my sadness for anger, I’m likely to blame, shame, and put the other person on defense, making it EXTREMELY unlikely that they’ll have any interest in helping me get my needs met.

There’s a disconnect here between the need that’s behind the sadness, and the behavior that would be in service to the need.

I abandon myself when I “cock block” getting my own needs met, by substituting my authentic emotion for a secondary one.

And on that note, I’m gaslighting MYSELF when I emotionally bypass.

When I bypass, I’m essentially trying to fool myself into believing that what I’m feeling isn’t really what I’m feeling. 

Just like when that asshole was cheating on you, but had you convinced that you were crazy, you’ll feel crazy when you’re emotionally bypassing.

The dissonance between your authentic and authentic emotion causes anxiety and confusion. We’re thrown off-center, making it difficult to act in our best interests. 9 times out of 10, we end up in a stress response, and either become aggressive (often passively) act like nothing’s wrong, shut down, or start people-pleasing…none of it ends well for us.

After years of bypassing, we discover we can’t trust ourselves; we can’t really be sure what we’re feeling, or what we NEED, or obviously, how to get our needs met.

As a result, we’re more susceptible to gaslighting from others, settling for less than what we want, accepting unacceptable behavior from others, not reaching professional & personal goals, and so much more “yuck”

I abandon myself when I can’t be trusted to own my truth; I lose self confidence, self trust and healthy self esteem. 

Additionally, emotional bypassing forces me to identify as a powerless version of myself…it’s like I’m a kid stuck in Ground Hog’s Day

Remember that emotional bypassing is a survival tool that you used as a young child/adolescent that has EXPIRED; anything used after its expiration date is no longer useful.

Problem is, emotional bypassing is a reaction to a trigger (the unacceptable, scary emotion) 

When you’re triggered, you drop out of the PRESENT MOMENT, and experience the situation from the perspective of the child/teen you were when you learned to be afraid of those emotions. 

You show up for your grown-up disagreement with your partner feeling like a scared little kid.

• You end up getting unsatisfying results because your “kid” is focused on surviving an imagined threat, not on solving the issue at hand, so the issue never progresses

• Your relationship stalls on the edge of true intimacy, creating loneliness and frustration

• You develop imposter syndrome because you can’t be sure if you’re the bad ass boss babe you are at work, or this insecure “kid” who loses herself in her personal life.

This becomes routine; you have the same arguments over and over, nothing changes, and Life becomes a monotonous, boring, predictable drag; you just feel “meh” about it all, and you still have another few decades to go.

I abandon myself when I expect my scared “kid” to handle the work that only a grown up should do. 

Emotional bypassing is just ONE way we abandon ourselves, but like ALL self abandoning ways, we have not only the ability, but the obligation, to make a correction.

Obviously, the first step to stop emotional bypassing is to commit to embracing our Emotional Self; using tools like journaling, non-dominant handwriting, visualization, scheduled emotional check ins (to name just a few) you will not only strengthen your emotional intelligence, but more importantly….you’ll learn that emotions won’t kill you. 

Emotions are safe. 

YOU are safe.

If you’re ready to stop letting self abandoning behaviors hold you back from experiencing maximum inner peace, confidence and joy….if you want to get your “spark” back, you’re ready to work with me. 

My private & group coaching programs offers teachings, tools & techniques that have helped hundreds of midlife sisters just like you enjoy more energy, intimacy and fun, even after years of  being stuck in old self-abandoning habits. 

Book your free consult above, and I hope this article gave you a sense of hope....CHANGE  HAPPENS! 

Love Stephanie