Bypassing is, essentially, avoidance. It's something we all do from time to time as a response to something unpleasant in our lives. But sometimes bypassing can cause us to go too far, putting off challenge for later that we'd be better off dealing with now. And sometimes in the self-help world, bypassing is either encouraged or deeply embedded in the thought system being pushed.
Dr. Glenn highlights how spiritual bypassing, emotional bypassing, and reality bypassing are all especially dangerous for trauma survivors. Have a listen so you can be prepared to recognize bypassing and know whether or not it's a potential red flag situation.
On another note, special thank you to everyone who donated to Dr. Glenn's birthday fundraiser to benefit SEEK! We are always so grateful for the support!
To Read:
“The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck
“Is This a Cult” by Anne L. Peterson https://isthisacultbook.com
About EMDR Therapy
About Somatic Therapy
“Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine
To Listen To:
SEEK Safely Podcast Interview with Anne Peterson Part 1, Part 2
The Deep End by Jennings Brown
Learn more about SEEK Safely on our website
Follow SEEK on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
Follow Dr. Glenn on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook
Read the memoir “This Sweet Life: how we lived after Kirby died” by Jean and her mom, Ginny Brown
Donate to support SEEK’s mission
To Contact SEEK email info@seeksafely.org
[00:00:00] At Seek Safely, it's our mission to empower seekers to have a safe and meaningful self-improvement journey.
[00:00:07] Why do we care? Seeking to be your best self is an amazing, beautiful human impulse that has led us to create art, invent technology, tell amazing stories, and reach the moon.
[00:00:19] But we saw the dark side of self-help in 2009 when a recklessly run self-improvement retreat led to the death of three people, including my sister Kirby Brown.
[00:00:30] We want people to seek to dream their big dreams and chase their beautiful goals, but we want to make sure they're safe along the way.
[00:00:39] This podcast is about education and empowerment and getting real about the promises and problems of self-help.
[00:00:46] We talk with people who understand and care about the self-help industry and everyone it touches.
[00:00:52] I'm Jean Brown.
[00:00:53] I'm Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.
[00:00:55] And this is The Seek Safely Podcast.
[00:01:00] Hello everybody and welcome to The Seek Safely Podcast.
[00:01:08] I am Jean Brown and I am here with my co-host, Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.
[00:01:12] That's me.
[00:01:14] I'm Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle.
[00:01:16] Not to be confused with Glenn Doyle.
[00:01:20] Exactly.
[00:01:22] And in my recording space, I will just mention my other co-host over here is the dog Makushla and she's a little cranky.
[00:01:32] So you might hear some little errant dog whines in the background.
[00:01:35] I promise I'm not doing anything to her.
[00:01:38] I just gave her a butter snack in fact, so she should be really happy right now.
[00:01:42] Makushla.
[00:01:43] Makushla.
[00:01:44] That's quite a name for a dog.
[00:01:46] That's a million dollar baby, right?
[00:01:48] It is a Gaelic name.
[00:01:52] It is a Gaelic name.
[00:01:54] But correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:01:56] In the movie Billion Dollar Baby, that was Clint Eastwood's nickname for Hillary Swank.
[00:02:02] Did I make this movie up?
[00:02:04] No, no, no.
[00:02:05] I remember that movie.
[00:02:06] I don't know if I saw it.
[00:02:08] It was this big emotional, well I won't spoil it.
[00:02:12] Boxing, right?
[00:02:14] She was the boxer.
[00:02:16] And then it takes a real swerve at the very end.
[00:02:19] But the point is that throughout the movie Clint Eastwood calls her Makushla and she never knows what it means.
[00:02:25] And at the very end of the movie he tells her what it means.
[00:02:28] It means family blood, right?
[00:02:31] Yeah, it's like blood of my blood or bone of my bone kind of thing.
[00:02:36] Makushla mechri.
[00:02:38] If you guys are listening to this podcast, don't tweet Jean the end of that movie.
[00:02:43] Let's go ahead and let Jean watch Million Dollar Baby and experience the magic of that ending.
[00:02:50] It's rough.
[00:02:51] Oh boy.
[00:02:52] It's rough.
[00:02:53] Anyway.
[00:02:54] All right.
[00:02:55] So yes.
[00:02:56] I would like to bypass the pain of the end of Million Dollar Baby by...
[00:03:02] You bypassed it by not watching it.
[00:03:05] Yes, I just completely skipped it.
[00:03:07] What should we talk about during this podcast, Jean?
[00:03:10] Yeah.
[00:03:11] So we are going to be talking about bypassing.
[00:03:15] I think a number of our listeners are probably...
[00:03:18] have probably gotten into a lot of other content that is somewhat critical of the self-help world.
[00:03:25] And people may have heard this term bypassing.
[00:03:29] I think people are most familiar with the term spiritual bypassing in particular.
[00:03:34] But yeah, in general, Dr. Glenn, why don't you go ahead and define what we mean by bypassing?
[00:03:41] I think sometimes these terms get a little confused.
[00:03:44] So bypassing has been on my mind for a minute.
[00:03:47] As you may or may not know, I tweet sometimes.
[00:03:50] And something that was recently discussed on the website formerly known as Twitter
[00:03:57] was what I call bypassing bullshit.
[00:03:59] So as you know, I work mostly with folks who have had very bad things happen to them
[00:04:05] and who are now working their trauma recovery, often their addiction recovery alongside it.
[00:04:11] And as we work our trauma recovery, we very often discover that we have internalized certain BS.
[00:04:18] I call it BS.
[00:04:19] It's belief systems.
[00:04:20] It's the other kind of BS too.
[00:04:23] But we come to believe sometimes that because bad things have happened to us
[00:04:29] and the perpetrator of those bad things is not going to pay for it
[00:04:33] because they're out of our lives, they're gone, they're not going to pay.
[00:04:35] They're not going to be held accountable that we somehow have to pay for it
[00:04:39] with pain, with self-injury, with self-sabotage.
[00:04:43] It's this like anybody who has struggled through trauma
[00:04:47] probably knows what I'm talking about here.
[00:04:49] It doesn't make any sense on a rational level.
[00:04:52] But we get it in our heads that if we were to not hurt ourselves
[00:04:57] or not sabotage ourselves, that means everyone gets off the hook and we can't have that.
[00:05:01] Here's the thing.
[00:05:02] Hurting ourselves doesn't actually hold anybody accountable.
[00:05:05] Like hurting ourselves doesn't actually fix or heal anything.
[00:05:11] And so I wrote a tweet that called it bypassing bullshit.
[00:05:16] And so I got some questions about this.
[00:05:18] Like what does that mean bypassing bullshit?
[00:05:20] When we try and bypass something, we are actually trying to avoid something.
[00:05:24] That's what a bypass is when somebody gets a heart bypass.
[00:05:28] They're having a surgical procedure that allows them to avoid a blockage in an artery.
[00:05:35] Right?
[00:05:36] When a traffic bypass is constructed, it's something looking to avoid
[00:05:44] a congested area or something like that.
[00:05:47] So bypassing equals avoidance.
[00:05:50] I think again, I think about this a lot because trauma survivors have a lot to avoid.
[00:05:55] Like the folks that I work with have a lot to avoid.
[00:05:58] We've had very bad things happen to us.
[00:06:00] We often deal with a lot of residual pain and trauma responses.
[00:06:06] So we tend to be particularly vulnerable to, I'm going to call them pitches
[00:06:12] that include bypassing as a piece of the puzzle because, man, there are various types of bypassing.
[00:06:19] Like you mentioned spiritual bypassing.
[00:06:21] I happen to think there's such a thing as emotional bypassing and trauma bypassing.
[00:06:25] We're going to talk in a few minutes about something I call labor bypassing.
[00:06:29] But the thing that all these things have in common is we're trying to avoid something.
[00:06:33] And avoidance, by the way, avoidance is not a reflection of character.
[00:06:39] It's not a reflection of our morality.
[00:06:42] Avoidance is not necessarily indicative of cowardice.
[00:06:47] Avoidance is actually a great big symptom constellation of post-traumatic disorders.
[00:06:52] It is a trauma response.
[00:06:54] And as I've said over and over again, trauma responses are not choices.
[00:06:59] They are nervous system reflexes.
[00:07:01] So when we talk about avoidance, we're not talking about somebody's a coward.
[00:07:06] We're not necessarily even talking about someone's making a choice.
[00:07:10] Well, when you think about it, a lot of avoidance, it's protective.
[00:07:14] It's a form of self-protection.
[00:07:16] So there's nothing cowardly in that.
[00:07:18] I think it's very normal.
[00:07:20] And I think it's very human to try to avoid things that cause pain.
[00:07:26] The problem is when that avoidance just delays the inevitable,
[00:07:32] there's something that you're going to have to face no matter what
[00:07:35] and avoiding it is just going to keep causing you problems.
[00:07:38] But yeah, I agree.
[00:07:40] I think it's important for us to note that there's nothing wrong in that impulse to avoid.
[00:07:46] I will see that and I will take you a step further.
[00:07:50] I'll see that and I'll raise you.
[00:07:53] Avoidance is the smart thing.
[00:07:56] Not always.
[00:07:59] Another tweet that I just wrote was something to the tune of, you know,
[00:08:04] look when a trauma survivor is immersed in a triggering environment,
[00:08:08] it's like an alcoholic in a bar.
[00:08:11] You know, when we have a reaction into the toxic environment around us,
[00:08:16] again, it's not necessarily really that we're making a choice.
[00:08:19] Like we're experiencing a reflex.
[00:08:22] So doesn't it kind of make sense to avoid the bar for an alcoholic if we can
[00:08:28] to avoid the triggering environment if we can when, you know,
[00:08:32] we are recovering from trauma?
[00:08:34] And the caveat there is that we'll know we can't always avoid triggers.
[00:08:38] And I always get a lot of, whenever I discuss this in public,
[00:08:41] I always get a lot of pushback to the tune of like,
[00:08:43] you're just teaching people to avoid their triggers.
[00:08:46] No, I think it's smart to avoid triggers while we're building our skill set
[00:08:51] if we can, right?
[00:08:53] I think it's certainly smart to manage our exposure to triggers if we can.
[00:08:58] And there are times and places when avoidance is absolutely the smart move.
[00:09:04] That's why our nervous system does it.
[00:09:06] That's why we have that, you know, it's in trauma psychology.
[00:09:10] We call it the flight trauma response, the flea trauma response.
[00:09:13] Get out of there.
[00:09:15] Facing the trigger, you know,
[00:09:17] when we were cave people facing the trigger of there being a saber-tooth tiger,
[00:09:20] there's no virtue just sitting there and hanging out with the saber-tooth tiger.
[00:09:23] Get out of there. Avoid it.
[00:09:25] Right. Exactly.
[00:09:27] So we're not down on avoidance.
[00:09:29] What we are kind of down on is the intentional promise that this technique
[00:09:36] or this philosophy, this tool, whatever,
[00:09:39] will allow you to avoid it with no consequences.
[00:09:43] That's really where these things become problematic.
[00:09:46] Right.
[00:09:48] And I think one of the things too that, like an interesting distinction.
[00:09:52] So of course we're talking about this in the context of the self-help industry.
[00:09:56] So it's not just that people are kind of choosing to bypass
[00:10:02] or choosing to avoid things on their own.
[00:10:05] They're actually being sold a thought system
[00:10:09] that is specifically going to help them do this bypassing
[00:10:14] or they're being told to use certain types of bypassing to various ends, right,
[00:10:20] for various purposes.
[00:10:21] But I think that adds another, a whole other layer on it
[00:10:24] when it's not just the person doing it themselves.
[00:10:27] Somebody else is actually kind of telling them or encouraging them to do it.
[00:10:30] You bet.
[00:10:32] This is often packaged as,
[00:10:35] and you're going to notice themes that are very familiar
[00:10:38] from certain self-help philosophies and personalities
[00:10:42] that start to recur, but this is often packaged as...
[00:10:46] So you've heard it said that you have to do this really difficult thing to grow,
[00:10:50] but that's a myth.
[00:10:52] That is a myth.
[00:10:53] That is big whatever wants you doing that suffering.
[00:10:58] I have this breakthrough that will allow you to avoid all that suffering
[00:11:03] and get the same result that you don't actually have to do this tough work.
[00:11:09] I can think of an early example of this.
[00:11:13] So my pal Tony Robbins, say pal in quotes,
[00:11:19] who sadly did not invite me on his podcast as it turns out.
[00:11:25] Now, I mean Tony Robbins in the personal power program talks about
[00:11:30] this time that he was on TV.
[00:11:32] So Tony Robbins back in the early days, he used to go on TV and cure people,
[00:11:36] in quotes, cure people of phobias in like five minutes.
[00:11:40] And he would use his own techniques and some NLP techniques
[00:11:44] and whatever and appear to cure people in five minutes.
[00:11:48] But anyway, he was talking about...
[00:11:50] There used to be a...
[00:11:52] It's not really a therapy technique, but it's a personal change technique
[00:11:55] called temporal tapping.
[00:11:57] Have you ever heard of temporal tapping?
[00:11:59] You know, I have heard the term, but I do not remember what it means.
[00:12:02] It's this thing, this idea that say you would call to mind something
[00:12:06] that you wanted to stop doing.
[00:12:10] Right?
[00:12:11] And he gives the example of like, so this guy was afraid of snakes.
[00:12:15] And he was like, okay, now think about snakes.
[00:12:18] And then they would, you know, so the temporal part of the head is on that side.
[00:12:23] That's the therapist or whomever.
[00:12:26] So okay, I think about snakes and then kind of go bam, bam, bam,
[00:12:28] like wham, wham, wham on the side of his head.
[00:12:30] Like think about snakes, bam, bam, bam.
[00:12:32] It was a form of aversive conditioning.
[00:12:35] And he was trying to eradicate this phobia of snakes.
[00:12:39] And the punchline of this story is that the therapist was doing the temporal tapping
[00:12:43] and smacking this poor guy on the side of the head as he was thinking about snakes.
[00:12:47] It didn't work.
[00:12:49] It didn't work.
[00:12:50] So Tony came along.
[00:12:51] Of course, Tony is the hero in this story.
[00:12:53] And Tony came along and actually delved into like what that fear of snakes was about.
[00:12:59] And the guy had to kind of actually talk about like, you know, how that fear of snakes came to be
[00:13:03] and what he actually associates with snakes, not just that snakes are aversive to him.
[00:13:09] And in doing that, he was able to resolve this phobia.
[00:13:14] What Tony was doing was giving us an example of bypassing her.
[00:13:17] Ironically, he was not the one doing the bypassing.
[00:13:19] It was the guy with the temporal tapping because with his kind of gimmicky technique
[00:13:24] of bam, bam, bam slapping him on the side of the head when we thought about snakes.
[00:13:28] He was trying to bypass the emotional work of figuring out what that phobia was all about
[00:13:34] and kind of resolving what that phobia was all about.
[00:13:37] I mean, it's a small example, kind of a small scale example.
[00:13:42] But the idea of bypassing has been entrenched in kind of self-help circles for a really long time.
[00:13:48] You and I were talking right before we started recording that maybe the motherload of bypassing
[00:13:55] spiritual and otherwise is our favorite concept, the law of attraction.
[00:14:00] Right? The good old secret, right?
[00:14:04] Yeah.
[00:14:05] So you said you primarily think about the secret, the law of attraction as kind of a spiritual bypass.
[00:14:13] Yeah. So I think we can define exactly what's meant by spiritual bypassing.
[00:14:20] So spiritual bypassing, it's not your bypassing spiritual beliefs.
[00:14:25] It's that you're using some spiritual belief to do the bypassing for you.
[00:14:33] So we see this a lot in, I mean, it happens in Christianity.
[00:14:37] Like I mentioned the phrase I love.
[00:14:40] I always love to hear is a Catholic kid growing up, let go and let God.
[00:14:47] So this, you know, like everything happens for a reason.
[00:14:50] God has a plan.
[00:14:52] God won't give you any more than you can handle.
[00:14:55] Yes, exactly. That's a good one.
[00:14:58] That's a good one.
[00:14:59] So in other words, when things are shit, it's a way to say,
[00:15:04] okay, you know, don't worry too much and don't lose faith.
[00:15:08] Don't lose faith because God has a plan.
[00:15:12] God won't give you more than you can handle.
[00:15:14] God will show you the way.
[00:15:15] You know, something will open up for you.
[00:15:17] And I think it's, you know, in some respects, it's okay to hold some of these beliefs.
[00:15:24] They can be comforting to us sometimes when we're facing difficult situations.
[00:15:28] So I don't just want to say that all of this type of bypassing is bad.
[00:15:33] But I think sometimes people use these types of thoughts and this type of bypassing to just completely ignore and avoid reality that they might just have to face.
[00:15:45] So yes, we were talking about the law of attraction.
[00:15:49] I think that's relevant in spiritual bypassing because people do tend to develop this concept of the law of attraction in such a way that it does become like almost a spiritual belief system.
[00:16:02] It really becomes a belief system for them.
[00:16:05] And so then, you know, we see it play out in a lot of different ways.
[00:16:10] You were talking about the, you know, the idea of manifesting, which we'll start, we'll get into a little more in a bit.
[00:16:17] Your favorite concept?
[00:16:18] You're your actual favorite concept?
[00:16:20] Yes, I love manifesting.
[00:16:21] You love it.
[00:16:22] Yeah.
[00:16:23] But then the other side of the law of attraction is the whole idea that, you know, any experience that you're having anything that you're dealing with any trouble or difficulty that you're in encountering in your life.
[00:16:38] Well, it's the result of your own thoughts.
[00:16:41] It's the result of thought patterns that you had.
[00:16:44] So if you're not successful in your business, well, obviously it's because there's some doubt that you're holding onto.
[00:16:52] And that's keeping you from what you want to actually actualize and manifest in your life.
[00:16:58] It's keeping you from the success because you're not believing in the success strong enough.
[00:17:02] You're holding on to some doubts.
[00:17:05] And then of course, you know, the other way that we see this being used is that people will use it to ignore all sorts of realities, especially ones that happen for people who aren't white,
[00:17:20] aren't privileged.
[00:17:22] The realities that people face as a result of things that they have absolutely no control over will sometimes be bypassed by these law of attraction beliefs.
[00:17:32] So if you are poor and you're struggling, well, that's your own fault.
[00:17:40] It has nothing to do with circumstances that you were born into.
[00:17:43] It has nothing to do with economic and social realities that are far beyond your one little life.
[00:17:50] It's all just because of your beliefs.
[00:17:52] So yeah, this is a very egregious use of spiritual bypassing in my opinion.
[00:18:00] Well, it bypasses the necessity of one, acknowledging some really ugly truths about our world, our culture, other people.
[00:18:13] Right?
[00:18:14] Yeah.
[00:18:15] Like I think about this every time a movement gets afoot where a subset of people decide that their candidate for office is chosen by God.
[00:18:25] Right?
[00:18:27] Well, God has just chosen that's God.
[00:18:30] I've seen a vision and God wants whomever to be president or what not is bypassing the reality that there are some ugly reasons why people might vote.
[00:18:42] One way or vote another way.
[00:18:45] So in some ways, the law of attraction specifically, yeah, it bypasses certain ugly realities about the world and having to cope with those and having to change those.
[00:18:57] Right.
[00:18:58] And it puts all of the onus on the individual when the reality is that there are some things that the individual can't change or can't fix, can't think away.
[00:19:09] And you know, this is something that we've talked about before that I really dislike about the self-help industry is this focus on the individual, which kind of lets everyone else off the hook.
[00:19:21] So, you know, there are a lot of issues in our society that deserve some attention and that we really need to reckon with.
[00:19:28] But instead of doing all of that work, we're just going to say, you know what?
[00:19:32] People just need to believe in themselves a little more.
[00:19:35] They just need to, you know, manifest more clearly what they want as opposed to, you know, there are certain realities in the world that need to be addressed.
[00:19:47] They need to have faith over fear, Jane.
[00:19:50] Mm-hmm.
[00:19:51] I keep telling you this.
[00:19:52] Yeah.
[00:19:53] Every day I text, Jean, like, faith over fear today.
[00:19:55] Come on.
[00:19:56] Let's do it.
[00:19:57] Yeah.
[00:19:58] Well, and I can tell you, you know, with a whole law of attraction thing, like we experienced this quite clearly when Kirby died at James Ray's event.
[00:20:06] It was painful for people to acknowledge that James Ray, somebody that they really trusted and believed in, had taken their safety, taken their lives for granted,
[00:20:17] that he had put them in real danger, and that he could have been responsible for the awful thing that happened, which was that three people died.
[00:20:25] So instead of grapple with that reality, they use the law of attraction as a way to explain why people could have died.
[00:20:31] So people actually said things to us like, well, Kirby must have, you know, done something in a past life.
[00:20:37] Oh, God, really?
[00:20:38] They were actually, oh yes, yes.
[00:20:40] Oh, they were, they actually wanted, they wanted to die.
[00:20:44] They were having such a good time in the afterlife and their, you know, death that this is what they actually wanted.
[00:20:51] And this is, this is why she died.
[00:20:53] So this was a, you know, an explanation that people were offering us as in my family to explain why Kirby died.
[00:21:02] I think it was also an explanation that people were latching on to for themselves because they didn't want to grapple with the reality that James Ray had just done something really egregious and awful.
[00:21:14] Oh, gosh.
[00:21:15] Yeah.
[00:21:16] Yeah.
[00:21:17] I would like the record to reflect that Jean Brown brought up James Arthur Ray on this episode of the Safe Safety Podcast.
[00:21:25] I didn't even say his name.
[00:21:26] I wasn't going to say his name.
[00:21:28] I thought maybe I should lay off that bit.
[00:21:31] I hadn't, you know what?
[00:21:32] I hadn't even remembered that when we first talked about, oh, let's talk about bypassing.
[00:21:36] But then as we're talking about, I'm like, oh yeah, all those people said those crazy things which were, which was absolutely spiritual bypassing, you know, using this belief in the law of attraction.
[00:21:47] To completely ignore a reality that they had experienced that they had all gone through, but they didn't want to believe it.
[00:21:55] So instead they used this terminology in the language and the ideas of the law of attraction to explain what had happened.
[00:22:03] You bet.
[00:22:05] The other thing that, well, two other things occurred to me about the law of attraction has a magnificent bypass.
[00:22:14] A bypass superhighway in some ways on the subject of spiritual bypassing.
[00:22:20] Not only does a strong comprehensive belief in the law of attraction bypass the necessity to kind of grapple with some painful realities of our world, some ugly realities of our world.
[00:22:34] It also bypasses the need to ask difficult questions about God and spirit.
[00:22:43] Right?
[00:22:44] So anybody who has studied philosophy seriously has stumbled upon kind of these basic questions about the nature of God.
[00:22:53] Like if there's a God who loves us and knows everything and can do anything he wants, then why do we have pain?
[00:23:00] Like why do we have terrible tragedies?
[00:23:02] Why does Job in the book of Job, why is he having such a hard time?
[00:23:07] My old philosophy teacher called that the Job dilemma.
[00:23:13] And those aren't easy questions to resolve and I would even make the argument that our teeny tiny three dimensional human minds may not even be terribly well equipped to grapple with those in a meaningful way.
[00:23:26] But the point is that, you know, they at some point in spiritual development.
[00:23:32] So the self-help writer M. Scott Peck who would probably turn over in his grave to know that I just called him a self-help writer.
[00:23:39] He was a psychiatrist.
[00:23:40] He was really, really a guy.
[00:23:41] But M. Scott Peck wrote about suffering and pain and he wrote about, you know, the stages of spiritual development.
[00:23:49] And like when he talked about the stages of spiritual development, he said, you know, look, usually we start out at this very simplistic stage of spiritual development where God is kind of this big cop in the sky.
[00:24:00] And then we go through a stage of doubt and wrestling and pain.
[00:24:05] And we don't like that.
[00:24:07] Like we human beings don't like, we especially don't like it when we're thinking about God.
[00:24:14] We want God to be consistent and there and the, you know, white beard.
[00:24:19] Like we want the, you know, our father.
[00:24:21] We want that.
[00:24:22] So it's a bit of a, it's a bit, it's a large spiritual bypass around asking difficult questions of God.
[00:24:29] If you just believe in the law of attraction like, well, okay, then I have an explanation for all this.
[00:24:32] Just my thoughts, thoughts are things, right?
[00:24:35] And I just attracted everything kind of getting more secular.
[00:24:39] The other thing that the law of attraction allows us to bypass is a lot of work and uncertainty.
[00:24:47] I think, I was thinking about this like, you know, there are different versions of different nuances of the law of attraction.
[00:24:56] But the basic idea is thoughts are things that our thoughts can impact the vibrations.
[00:25:04] Like our thoughts have vibrations and they vibrate at a frequency.
[00:25:08] You know, they can affect the vibrations around us.
[00:25:12] And eventually we can, if we're vibrating at the, if we want a million dollars,
[00:25:16] we've got to vibrate at the same frequency as a million dollars.
[00:25:19] And it can't help but make its way to us, right?
[00:25:22] What's missing from that equation is figuring out how to make a million dollars.
[00:25:27] And I know that there look, don't at me guys.
[00:25:30] I know there are plenty of law of attraction teachers who say, look, you can't just sit and visualize it.
[00:25:35] You got to work for it.
[00:25:36] I know that.
[00:25:37] I'm talking about the concept itself.
[00:25:39] The concept itself is almost designed to be like, hey, you can't figure out how to make a million dollars.
[00:25:45] Don't worry about it.
[00:25:46] You don't have to know how.
[00:25:47] In fact, a lot of teachers actually say that.
[00:25:49] Don't worry about the how.
[00:25:50] Just focus on the vibe.
[00:25:53] Focus on the end goal, et cetera.
[00:25:57] Not only is this conceptually, this wonderful workaround like, oh man,
[00:26:02] you're telling me I don't have to figure out how to make a million dollars.
[00:26:05] It's fantastic.
[00:26:06] I need to see here and visualize a million dollars.
[00:26:08] And then eventually because it's a law, it's a universal law,
[00:26:11] eventually it has to come to me.
[00:26:13] It also bypasses the necessity of asking difficult questions of why your business didn't work.
[00:26:20] You know, did I miscalculate the market?
[00:26:23] Did it do it?
[00:26:24] Is my product no good?
[00:26:25] Am I any good at this?
[00:26:27] We don't have to worry about any of those questions if the answer is,
[00:26:31] well, I just didn't have enough faith.
[00:26:33] My visualization wasn't clear enough.
[00:26:35] I must not have been vibrating on the same frequency as that million dollars.
[00:26:41] And I think it also sets us up to not just not succeed because we're not putting in the effort,
[00:26:49] but then to really take that on ourselves as, oh God,
[00:26:54] like there just must be something really terribly wrong with me
[00:26:59] that I can't find the success that I want.
[00:27:02] No matter how much I think I want it, I just can't do it.
[00:27:06] And instead of like you're saying, asking these tough questions
[00:27:10] and kind of analyzing the actions,
[00:27:16] we're just so focused on the thoughts and the ideas
[00:27:20] and our own mindset or whatever.
[00:27:23] I don't know, I think that's kind of a dangerous path to go down
[00:27:26] where people then just get into like a lot of self-loathing, I think,
[00:27:30] when things don't go the way that they're hoping them to go.
[00:27:33] And we've always said,
[00:27:35] one of our biggest criticisms of law of attraction has always been
[00:27:40] that it sets you up for self-loathing,
[00:27:45] that self-judgment, self-loathing, self-punishment
[00:27:50] that just doesn't need to exist.
[00:27:52] It's not that I don't think it's ever appropriate to feel in some ways bad about ourselves.
[00:27:58] In fact, I think guilt can actually be a very useful emotion sometimes.
[00:28:01] That's why we don't have a bunch of sociopaths running around.
[00:28:04] Except that we do.
[00:28:06] But no, like it's not necessary to go around blaming and judging
[00:28:13] and condemning ourselves and trying to punish ourselves
[00:28:16] for not believing hard enough to vibrate the million bucks into our mailbox.
[00:28:23] I can tell you that I read a book, so this was probably when I was a postdoc in like 2008
[00:28:27] in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
[00:28:29] and I'd read some book on law of attraction and they said,
[00:28:32] so if you tape a dollar bill to the inside of your mailbox,
[00:28:40] then the molecules in your mailbox will be vibrating to the tune of money
[00:28:45] because it's right there.
[00:28:47] It's right there.
[00:28:48] Things influence the vibration of the things around them.
[00:28:51] So money will start arriving in your mailbox.
[00:28:55] Mailbox becomes a money magnet.
[00:28:57] I did it, Gene.
[00:29:01] I can't clearly recall money ever arriving at my mailbox,
[00:29:04] but that was probably my fault.
[00:29:06] That was clearly my fault.
[00:29:09] Bypassing is a concept again that we see over and over again,
[00:29:13] like most of these self-help concepts.
[00:29:15] We were talking last time with Ann Peterson,
[00:29:18] and we were kind of chit-chatting about the stuff of Est
[00:29:24] and Werner Erhard and the philosophies of Landmark Forum and stuff.
[00:29:29] And something that struck me was that,
[00:29:31] well, no, it's the same stuff.
[00:29:33] It's the same stuff that we've seen in various teachers
[00:29:36] and various systems.
[00:29:37] Again, something that we know about self-help is that these concepts
[00:29:40] come up over and over again.
[00:29:41] Bypassing is no different.
[00:29:43] Scott Peck, who I mentioned a minute ago,
[00:29:45] the author of The Road Best Traveled,
[00:29:47] one of my favorite self-help books, mind you.
[00:29:49] He wrote a lot about this concept of human pain,
[00:29:53] like human pain and how do we understand it?
[00:29:56] And he took the Job Dilemma on, like Square.
[00:30:00] He's like, look, how do we wrestle with this?
[00:30:02] His conclusion was a bit of a spiritual bypass in my opinion
[00:30:06] because Peck arrived at the conclusion that, well,
[00:30:10] maybe the purpose of life is to grow.
[00:30:14] And maybe every painful experience forces us to grow.
[00:30:18] So maybe this reality, Earth, whatever,
[00:30:22] was designed by God to teach us things we need to know,
[00:30:26] which again, it's a bypass to the tune of it
[00:30:30] that offers a pat explanation
[00:30:32] that allows us to avoid thorny questions of why would God hurt me?
[00:30:36] Well, here's why God would hurt you.
[00:30:38] He loves you.
[00:30:39] He wants you to grow.
[00:30:41] We see this entrenched in, I mean, people who know me
[00:30:45] know I'm a big religious and Catholic history buff.
[00:30:48] Like we see this entrenched in the stories of the saints.
[00:30:51] You know, God sends his greatest trials
[00:30:54] to his strongest soldiers, the saints.
[00:30:57] Like, you know, if God seems to be punishing you,
[00:31:00] that's because he loves you.
[00:31:02] Not only is it a bypass of asking thorny questions
[00:31:06] about, huh, this God that loves us?
[00:31:08] What's up with this?
[00:31:10] It's also kind of this weird maybe gaslighty kind of thing
[00:31:15] of, oh, so an experiencing terrible pain.
[00:31:19] This means love.
[00:31:21] This means ultimate love.
[00:31:22] I am so loved because guess what?
[00:31:24] I'm so much pain.
[00:31:25] I must be so loved.
[00:31:27] This is exactly the kind of psychology that many cults
[00:31:32] and many abusive relationships end up in.
[00:31:36] But spiritual bypassing, love attraction,
[00:31:40] not the only example of bypassing.
[00:31:42] You know, something that I think about a lot.
[00:31:44] So again, I work with trauma survivors.
[00:31:47] We're all working real survivors working our recovery
[00:31:49] one day at a time.
[00:31:50] The trauma work space is as chock full of supposed
[00:31:57] opportunities to bypass the pain of processing
[00:32:01] and resolving trauma.
[00:32:03] And I'll be the first to admit the field of trauma
[00:32:06] treatment and trauma psychology is not perfect.
[00:32:08] We have not figured everything out.
[00:32:10] You know, we think we figured out a few things,
[00:32:12] but what we figured out in trauma treatment pales
[00:32:18] in comparison to everything that we've not figured out.
[00:32:21] That said, it seems that trauma in particular
[00:32:26] is the kind of thing that a lot of gurus,
[00:32:29] a lot of organizations, programs approach and say,
[00:32:33] look, we can take away this pain.
[00:32:38] We can take away these symptoms.
[00:32:40] We can take away this, you know,
[00:32:42] but without the necessity of like, you know those
[00:32:44] therapy guys, they want you to sit in a room
[00:32:46] and they talk about your trauma.
[00:32:48] Who wants to do that?
[00:32:50] They want you to feel your feelings,
[00:32:52] but the hell is up with that?
[00:32:54] That's just big therapy trying to get your money.
[00:32:57] We have, and then they give their pitch.
[00:33:02] So there are some,
[00:33:03] and some of them are even kind of based in therapy.
[00:33:05] So a lot of people might be familiar with EMDR,
[00:33:07] eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.
[00:33:10] It's a therapy technique.
[00:33:11] There is a trope about it, a belief about it
[00:33:14] that it's a less verbal type of trauma processing
[00:33:18] that involves either bilateral stimulation,
[00:33:20] like sometimes you do it with what are called
[00:33:22] theratappers, these things that you hold
[00:33:24] and stimulate your hands back and forth.
[00:33:26] Sometimes it's done with light.
[00:33:28] I got trained in EMDR, gosh, going on eight years ago now
[00:33:32] and anybody actually trained in EMDR knows
[00:33:35] that EMDR, the technique itself,
[00:33:37] it's actually a tool in a larger treatment approach
[00:33:40] for trauma, like actual EMDR therapy.
[00:33:43] And I say, well, don't worry about talking about your trauma.
[00:33:45] Just do the flashy light thing and you're fine.
[00:33:48] Right, right.
[00:33:49] It's not a whole treatment on its own.
[00:33:51] It's a tool in a treatment.
[00:33:54] Exactly.
[00:33:55] Program, yeah.
[00:33:57] And if you do therapy, treatment of EMDR is part of it.
[00:34:02] I'm going to spoil the suspense.
[00:34:03] You're going to be doing a lot of talking about your therapy
[00:34:06] or about your trauma.
[00:34:07] You're going to be doing a lot of talking about your trauma.
[00:34:09] That said, there's a belief
[00:34:11] that trauma is a way to make it happen.
[00:34:13] And sometimes it's marketed as, well, look,
[00:34:16] like this is a way to non or less verbally kind of deal
[00:34:20] with your trauma.
[00:34:21] It's not.
[00:34:22] There's another approach.
[00:34:25] Well, there are all these somatic experiencing approaches.
[00:34:29] And mind you, trauma, look, the body keeps the score.
[00:34:32] Right?
[00:34:33] I mean, trauma does live in the body
[00:34:35] as well as in the nervous system in the mind.
[00:34:37] I mean, in the end, it's all the body really,
[00:34:39] like even the mind is the body.
[00:34:41] And lots of people have done lots of really great work
[00:34:44] with things like somatic psychotherapies,
[00:34:47] like Peter Levine, the psychologist Peter Levine
[00:34:50] is famous for his whole idea of trauma processing was that,
[00:34:54] well, okay, so when animals out in the animal kingdom
[00:34:59] experience trauma, they go into this freeze trauma
[00:35:02] response and they kind of shake and then they're frozen.
[00:35:06] What they need to do to release all of that energy
[00:35:10] is they need to kind of complete the action
[00:35:12] of like running away or fighting back
[00:35:14] or something like that.
[00:35:16] And people got a, so he wrote about this in a book,
[00:35:19] a very famous book titled Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine.
[00:35:23] And it's a really good book.
[00:35:25] Like I highly recommend everybody interested
[00:35:27] in trauma read it.
[00:35:29] That said, it's possible to look at that approach
[00:35:34] or to read about that approach and think like,
[00:35:36] oh, all I really need to get past,
[00:35:38] I don't need to talk about my trauma.
[00:35:40] I don't need to process and resolve my trauma.
[00:35:42] What I actually need to do is,
[00:35:43] remember how I shake out of this?
[00:35:45] Well, yeah, and I think we see tons of therapies
[00:35:50] or treatments within the self-help world
[00:35:53] that are offering this emotional bypassing.
[00:35:56] So when you hear people talk about like,
[00:35:59] oh, there's this thing and it's going to cure everything.
[00:36:03] Right? It's going to fix all the things.
[00:36:05] So gosh, what's one I came across recently?
[00:36:08] Like a cryotherapy type thing.
[00:36:11] Jumping into cold water.
[00:36:13] Doing like a cold water swim every day.
[00:36:15] Oh yeah.
[00:36:16] And it sounds like, you know,
[00:36:18] there is some science behind the impacts
[00:36:21] that it has on your nervous system in like a physiological way.
[00:36:26] But I think the problem is when people are offering
[00:36:29] these types of things saying,
[00:36:31] you know, this is going to cure your trauma alone.
[00:36:34] Like just that.
[00:36:35] All you have to do is this.
[00:36:36] You don't have to do the talk therapy
[00:36:38] that's going to last for years and years and years
[00:36:40] and it's going to be so very painful.
[00:36:42] You don't have to do all of these other things
[00:36:44] that are going to be harder to deal with.
[00:36:46] You can just do this thing and this is going to work
[00:36:49] and this will be fine.
[00:36:50] You bet.
[00:36:51] The reason why we care about this,
[00:36:53] especially in the trauma space
[00:36:56] is not just because the co-host of this podcast
[00:36:59] is Juan Patrick Doyle.
[00:37:01] It is also because that, you know,
[00:37:03] we did an episode a while back
[00:37:06] about trauma and Tiel Swan.
[00:37:10] And in that episode,
[00:37:11] we talked a lot about how trauma survivors
[00:37:15] are vulnerable to manipulation
[00:37:19] and exploitation from the self-help industry.
[00:37:21] And there are lots of reasons for that
[00:37:23] and they're valid reasons.
[00:37:24] Trauma survivors have often been not well served
[00:37:27] by the mental health establishment.
[00:37:30] Mental health psychotherapy, the psychotherapy field.
[00:37:33] I tweet stuff like this
[00:37:35] and then other therapists yell at me.
[00:37:36] Like, how dare you?
[00:37:37] No, look, I'm a therapist
[00:37:38] and I love doing therapy.
[00:37:39] I think therapy is,
[00:37:40] it can be an amazing tool
[00:37:44] for some people at the right time.
[00:37:47] It's definitely not the panacea
[00:37:49] that some therapists seem to think it is.
[00:37:52] The mental health field in psychotherapy industry
[00:37:56] has not served trauma survivors particularly well.
[00:37:59] I mean, it was only in the 90s really, realistically.
[00:38:04] It was really only in the 90s
[00:38:06] that we started talking meaningfully about complex trauma
[00:38:09] when Judy Herman came along
[00:38:11] with trauma and recovery.
[00:38:14] Anyway, my point is that because the mental health field,
[00:38:18] my field, has not served trauma survivors well
[00:38:22] and still does in a lot of ways.
[00:38:25] The self-help world happily steps in.
[00:38:30] When you have James Arthur Ray,
[00:38:32] that time I brought him up,
[00:38:34] when you have James Arthur Ray talking about
[00:38:36] like making part of his pitch for his online
[00:38:39] for his Zoom events as he did.
[00:38:42] Yeah, heal your trauma.
[00:38:44] Like we know something has gone wrong.
[00:38:47] We know that it's something
[00:38:48] that so many people struggle with
[00:38:50] and suffer with and really want meaningful answers to.
[00:38:53] It reminds me of the quote from the movie
[00:38:57] The American President where Michael J. Fox
[00:39:01] is telling Michael Douglas that,
[00:39:03] look, people want leadership.
[00:39:06] He says, people want leadership so badly
[00:39:08] they'll crawl across the desert toward a mirage
[00:39:10] and then when there's nothing there,
[00:39:12] they'll drink the sand.
[00:39:14] That's I think with the way
[00:39:15] that a lot of trauma survivors feel
[00:39:17] about like effective understanding
[00:39:19] and relief of their trauma.
[00:39:21] It's very vulnerable to the self-help ecosystem.
[00:39:24] Yeah, well and you know,
[00:39:26] I'll put this out there on the flip side of it
[00:39:31] as a positive for the self-help world.
[00:39:34] I think part of what you said early on there
[00:39:37] was that some things work for some people
[00:39:41] and don't work for other people
[00:39:43] and then there might be something else
[00:39:45] that will work for them.
[00:39:47] And so I think sometimes we see these
[00:39:49] different kinds of treatments or therapies
[00:39:51] that are offered in the self-help space
[00:39:53] and they might actually be really great
[00:39:55] for certain people.
[00:39:57] Like meditating might work really well
[00:40:00] for some people or yoga might do
[00:40:03] really amazing things for some people.
[00:40:05] Cryotherapy might be fantastic for some people.
[00:40:09] I guess what we want to caution people
[00:40:11] to think about is that
[00:40:13] in all likelihood, especially if you're dealing
[00:40:16] with some heavy trauma
[00:40:18] or you're dealing with some heavy stuff,
[00:40:21] chances are none of these is going to be
[00:40:25] the one single answer that's going to fix you
[00:40:28] and going to be great for you.
[00:40:30] And I would be very, very careful about
[00:40:33] entrusting your treatment
[00:40:36] and your healing to somebody
[00:40:39] who doesn't really have a background
[00:40:41] in dealing with trauma.
[00:40:43] But you might find that
[00:40:45] in combination with other treatments,
[00:40:48] doing some of these other things,
[00:40:50] going to a yoga class on a regular basis
[00:40:52] might be really beneficial for you.
[00:40:54] It's kind of like learning styles.
[00:40:56] I think everybody has a different learning style.
[00:40:58] Maybe people have different healing styles, right?
[00:41:01] You're bad.
[00:41:04] You know, I got yelled at
[00:41:07] off Mike by Ann Peterson
[00:41:10] the other night because we were talking about Tiel Swan.
[00:41:16] And I told her, and she said some harsh words for Tiel Swan
[00:41:19] and I told her like,
[00:41:21] I mean, look, I know, it's just problems there.
[00:41:24] Yes, problems.
[00:41:26] That said, I always kind of had a soft spot for Tiel.
[00:41:28] You know, she's a trauma survivor
[00:41:30] and whatever, but the other thing is
[00:41:32] like I don't, what I know
[00:41:34] of how Tiel Swan works,
[00:41:36] I don't hate everything she says.
[00:41:38] I hate some of, you know, I'm not nuts about
[00:41:40] some of the ways that she does business.
[00:41:43] But I will say about Tiel Swan,
[00:41:46] boy, we're going to get a ratioed on this podcast.
[00:41:50] A lot of the things that I understand she offers,
[00:41:53] like again, I don't have a comprehensive understanding
[00:41:55] of what she does.
[00:41:57] My understanding based on podcasts
[00:42:01] and the deep end documentary
[00:42:04] and the Gateway podcast,
[00:42:06] excellent podcast by our friend, friend of the pod,
[00:42:09] Jennings Brown, who wrote that article on Steve Maribali
[00:42:13] that I sent you.
[00:42:15] We got to talk about it later.
[00:42:17] Anyway, stay tuned. Preview of coming attractions, guys.
[00:42:20] Do not forward Steve Maribali quotes
[00:42:23] on social media. Don't do it.
[00:42:25] Anyway, now my understanding
[00:42:28] of what Tiel does is actually pretty light
[00:42:31] on the spiritual bypassing, which is interesting
[00:42:33] because you would kind of expect her to be the queen
[00:42:35] of spiritual bypassing.
[00:42:37] What she tends to offer from my understanding,
[00:42:39] again, what I know is, you know, tools
[00:42:42] and a philosophy and a perspective on actually processing trauma.
[00:42:45] And that's really what, and again,
[00:42:47] I'm not saying it's ideal. I'm not saying it's great.
[00:42:49] I am not nuts about her doing it specifically
[00:42:52] with lack of safety guardrails and credentials.
[00:42:56] And yeah, problematic, I get it.
[00:42:58] I'm talking about the technique itself.
[00:43:00] Really what we can say, you know, just in general is
[00:43:04] when it comes to trauma, when it comes to anything,
[00:43:07] if a guru, an organization, a program
[00:43:11] is promising you a shortcut around that hard work,
[00:43:16] whatever that hard work is.
[00:43:18] If that hard work is processing trauma,
[00:43:20] if that hard work is building a business,
[00:43:23] like whatever it is, that should be kind of a flag
[00:43:28] that goes up like, is this bypassing?
[00:43:31] Would Dr. Doyle say this is bypassing bullshit?
[00:43:34] Would he? Is that what he would say?
[00:43:36] Exactly, yeah. And that's it.
[00:43:39] I think it's that caution of when you see someone offering
[00:43:43] something that is going to completely let you off the hook
[00:43:46] for doing that hard work, that's definitely a red flag.
[00:43:50] Even if that thing that they're offering
[00:43:53] might end up being beneficial or useful for you,
[00:43:57] chances are it's not going to be the only thing that you need.
[00:44:02] And so you shouldn't just be entrusting all of your recovery,
[00:44:06] all of your healing, all of your growth to that one person
[00:44:11] and that one thing.
[00:44:13] You bet.
[00:44:15] When we talk about bypassing an interesting question
[00:44:20] that gets raised is so that the 12-step tradition,
[00:44:25] like Alcoholics Anonymous, is that a bit of a spiritual bypass?
[00:44:28] It's an interesting question because a big part of 12-step
[00:44:34] is this idea that while we are powerless over our addiction,
[00:44:38] therefore we are going to turn it over to our higher power.
[00:44:42] I mean talk about, like it sounds like a spiritual bypass, right?
[00:44:47] Like it sounds like, oh, okay,
[00:44:49] like I'm just going to turn it over to God, it'll be fine.
[00:44:52] In fact, I have to.
[00:44:53] Like in the AA version is like, well, that's the only way out of addiction
[00:44:56] is by turning it over to your higher power.
[00:44:58] Like the more you try to handle it, the worse it's going to get.
[00:45:02] My experience with 12-step is that even though, yeah, I get it,
[00:45:08] that piece sounds a bit like pretty bypassing.
[00:45:12] That said, when you really look at what happens in 12-step recovery,
[00:45:18] you know, folks come into meetings and they talk about their lives
[00:45:21] and they talk about the problems and they get a sponsor,
[00:45:24] like they have relationships with their sponsor that are supportive
[00:45:28] and safe and like the actual stuff of 12-step recovery in practice
[00:45:34] actually comes face to face with a lot of hard stuff.
[00:45:38] Like if you go into a 12-step meeting,
[00:45:40] I hear people not trying to bypass anything.
[00:45:42] Like they're trying to, you know,
[00:45:44] if they're honestly working their recovery,
[00:45:46] they're trying to hit it head on.
[00:45:48] I feel that same way about, I mean my approach to,
[00:45:50] as everyone knows, my approach to trauma recovery
[00:45:52] is heavily influenced by addiction recovery.
[00:45:55] Same way, like people who are in trauma recovery,
[00:45:59] realistic, sustainable trauma recovery,
[00:46:02] are not trying to bypass anything.
[00:46:04] You know, we are kind of hitting our past
[00:46:07] and our fears and our feelings and our memories kind of head on.
[00:46:11] In good recovery, in safe, realistic, sustainable recovery,
[00:46:15] we're also developing skills and tools to make that possible
[00:46:19] and stay stable and stay safe, right?
[00:46:22] But actual growth doesn't bypass anything.
[00:46:26] So again, if you're out there in the self-help landscape,
[00:46:31] the personal growth landscape and somebody's pitch is,
[00:46:35] yeah man, like it's a myth that you've got to do that work.
[00:46:39] Like I will teach you to do the thing.
[00:46:42] I will give you the shortcut that puts you on the bullet train.
[00:46:47] That's the red flag.
[00:46:49] Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:51] Yeah, I think the effect of problematic bypassing
[00:46:58] is that it reduces everything.
[00:47:01] It makes everything pretty shallow.
[00:47:03] So, you know, it kind of reduces complex realities
[00:47:08] and complex issues into very simple and shallow thoughts.
[00:47:14] So, like you're saying with 12 step,
[00:47:16] yeah there might be this idea of kind of letting go,
[00:47:21] like releasing some control to a higher power,
[00:47:26] but it doesn't let people completely off the hook
[00:47:30] to then, you know, completely ignore harm they've caused
[00:47:35] or, you know, things that they're dealing with.
[00:47:38] Like it still encourages people to go into all of that.
[00:47:41] So in that sense I think it's not the kind of problematic bypassing
[00:47:45] that we're talking about because it's not reducing everything
[00:47:49] into this one concept.
[00:47:52] I think the real problematic bypassing is it makes everything very shallow.
[00:47:56] Well, it's interesting too because in 12 step,
[00:48:01] you get to like, okay, I admitted I was powerless.
[00:48:05] I turned it over to God and that's it, right?
[00:48:08] No, no, no, that's step three.
[00:48:10] There are so many more steps.
[00:48:12] Exactly, there's more.
[00:48:13] In fact, right after that, I think it's the fourth step.
[00:48:16] Somebody can correct me on that.
[00:48:18] I think it's step four is no, no, no, then you make a,
[00:48:21] what's called a moral inventory.
[00:48:24] It's basically you turn back and you look at yourself
[00:48:28] and then you go on like you cop to all of your stuff
[00:48:34] and then you go and you make amends, right?
[00:48:37] Like, and you can do all this stuff.
[00:48:38] So I always thought that was fine.
[00:48:40] It's like, yeah man, we turned it over to God.
[00:48:42] We're good, right?
[00:48:43] Oh no, oh no, right.
[00:48:47] You know, I was thinking about,
[00:48:49] you know, since you insist on talking about James Arthur Rehm,
[00:48:53] every podcast dream, every podcast.
[00:48:55] I know, oh my God.
[00:48:58] I love telling the story about how James tells the story.
[00:49:04] He's got versions of the story too.
[00:49:07] So James doesn't have credentials.
[00:49:10] He has zero credentials.
[00:49:12] His credential, James Arthur Rehm's credential
[00:49:15] to tell anybody how to live their life is he was on Oprah
[00:49:18] a couple times.
[00:49:19] That's his credential.
[00:49:21] He doesn't end run around this issue of credentials by,
[00:49:24] and again, this is the story that he tells.
[00:49:26] He, and I think it's in the forward to his best selling book,
[00:49:30] Harmonic Wealth.
[00:49:31] He has this wonderful little story about how he visited
[00:49:34] the Holy Land and he went,
[00:49:37] I swear you're going to think I'm making this up.
[00:49:39] I'm not, he tells a story about how he went up Mount Sinai.
[00:49:43] You know, Mount Sinai, like Ten Commandments.
[00:49:45] Like the Mount Sinai, yeah.
[00:49:47] And he spent overnight in the cave where,
[00:49:51] where supposedly Moses received the Ten Commandments
[00:49:55] and that's where he was gifted with the inspiration
[00:49:57] to write Harmonic Wealth.
[00:49:59] You know, God literally gave it to him on Mount Sinai.
[00:50:02] James Arthur Rehm is Moses 2.0.
[00:50:05] Book it. I love it.
[00:50:08] He has another story that he tells like so a couple years ago now.
[00:50:12] He was, James was offering an online course about
[00:50:15] like the ancient secrets of,
[00:50:17] I think it was like the Mayans or the Toltecs
[00:50:20] or something like that.
[00:50:24] And he told the story about how one day in the mail
[00:50:27] he got this mysterious envelope and it had no return address
[00:50:30] and he opened up the envelope and it said,
[00:50:33] go to this URL.
[00:50:34] This is kind of a techie spin on the Mount Sinai thing,
[00:50:39] but now this mysterious letter said,
[00:50:43] go to this URL.
[00:50:44] He went to this URL.
[00:50:45] I love it.
[00:50:46] He has no concerns about whether it's malware or anything.
[00:50:48] He just goes.
[00:50:51] And there he learned the secrets of the Toltecs,
[00:50:54] you know, the whole thing.
[00:50:57] Both of these, well both of these stories have in common are,
[00:51:01] James was gifted with knowledge from some spiritual source,
[00:51:05] whether it's God on Mount Sinai or whether it's the mysterious
[00:51:07] center of the envelope.
[00:51:08] Who knows?
[00:51:11] It allows him to bypass these thorny questions of who are you
[00:51:15] to tell me how to do anything?
[00:51:19] It's this idea and so many gurus do this.
[00:51:23] They kind of use as their credential.
[00:51:25] We've talked about this a lot.
[00:51:26] They kind of use as their credential.
[00:51:27] Look what I did.
[00:51:29] Like I built a business.
[00:51:30] I did, you know, whatever.
[00:51:31] And that becomes their credential, right?
[00:51:34] Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:35] Or I lived through a hard thing.
[00:51:38] And that becomes their credential.
[00:51:40] You bet.
[00:51:41] Yeah.
[00:51:42] Note that I lived through a hard thing.
[00:51:44] That is part of my story that everybody knows.
[00:51:45] I then went on and got the thing.
[00:51:47] I got the doctorate.
[00:51:48] I did.
[00:51:49] Right.
[00:51:50] And it's all, you know, it's okay for somebody to tell their
[00:51:55] story in the sense of here's what I did.
[00:51:58] Here's what happened to me.
[00:51:59] Here's what I did.
[00:52:00] Here's how I dealt with it.
[00:52:02] I hope that by telling you this story,
[00:52:04] it might help you with whatever you're going through.
[00:52:07] I think that's fine.
[00:52:09] It's when I dealt with this now,
[00:52:12] therefore I am qualified to tell you how to deal with yours.
[00:52:15] You bet.
[00:52:16] There's a difference.
[00:52:18] It bypasses the really important question of really epistemology.
[00:52:23] Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with how do we know what we know?
[00:52:29] It bypasses kind of this whole thing.
[00:52:31] I went through a hard time or I was given these commandments,
[00:52:35] these ideas on Mount Sinai.
[00:52:38] It bypasses the question, the epistemological question.
[00:52:41] How do you know what you know?
[00:52:43] Did you go to school?
[00:52:44] Did you apprentice in a tradition?
[00:52:50] Did you have a mentor even?
[00:52:53] I really love the story about how James for years was saying that he had been trained by
[00:52:57] like Shaman in Peru and he had a mentor.
[00:53:01] It turns out the mentor was a tour guide that he once went on a tour of Manchupichu.
[00:53:06] Fantastic.
[00:53:07] But the point is, but that too is bypassing.
[00:53:10] It's bypassing those those those thrown the questions and he's asking his audience to buy
[00:53:14] into that bypassing as well.
[00:53:16] I'm going to say that any teacher guru therapist even who is going to tell you,
[00:53:22] look, don't look behind the curtain.
[00:53:26] Don't worry about it.
[00:53:27] Red flag.
[00:53:28] Red flag for bypassing is a foot.
[00:53:31] Yeah, exactly.
[00:53:35] There are examples for what it's worth.
[00:53:37] Examples of bypassing.
[00:53:39] I mean, look in actual psychology, like I'm going to go on my brief mini rant about so
[00:53:45] many DSM diagnosis.
[00:53:48] I'm not anti diagnosis.
[00:53:51] Nobody get on Twitter and tell me that I'm anti psychiatry.
[00:53:54] Anti diagnose.
[00:53:55] I'm not.
[00:53:56] I believe in diagnosis.
[00:53:57] It can be a useful tool.
[00:53:58] It's a necessary tool in the current environment.
[00:54:00] Yes.
[00:54:01] That said, I defy you to show me a with the exception of a
[00:54:06] post-traumatic disorders.
[00:54:08] Show me many anyway, diagnoses that add to our understanding of what's actually going
[00:54:14] on.
[00:54:15] I'll take for example, personality disorders.
[00:54:18] I can say this person has borderline personality disorder because blah, blah,
[00:54:22] blah, right?
[00:54:23] They do this.
[00:54:24] They do this.
[00:54:25] They do this.
[00:54:26] Right.
[00:54:27] They fit the criteria for borderline personality display these.
[00:54:29] Yeah.
[00:54:30] You bet.
[00:54:31] So I can describe them as borderline.
[00:54:34] It then doesn't work to turn around and say, oh, why do they do blah, blah,
[00:54:38] blah?
[00:54:39] Well, because their borderline keep up.
[00:54:41] How do you know their borderline?
[00:54:43] They do blah, blah, blah.
[00:54:44] Well, why do they do that?
[00:54:45] Because they're borderline.
[00:54:46] It gets circular, right?
[00:54:47] So many DSM diagnoses are descriptors.
[00:54:51] Like they don't speak to what we call etiology.
[00:54:54] You know where this disorder comes from.
[00:54:56] Like we've got theories.
[00:54:57] We've got loads of theories about, but just the diagnosis itself is a form
[00:55:02] of bypassing.
[00:55:03] You will very frequently see, and you see it everywhere.
[00:55:09] And unfortunately you do see it in medical and psychiatric settings.
[00:55:12] They're like, well, why do they do that?
[00:55:13] Well, they're borderline.
[00:55:14] They're borderline.
[00:55:15] That's why they do that, right?
[00:55:17] That's an information-free statement.
[00:55:19] It bypasses the thorny question of why they do that.
[00:55:23] Right now one of the big conversations in my field of trauma psychology is what's
[00:55:28] the difference between borderline personality disorder and complex traumatic stress disorder?
[00:55:33] Because we know for a fact that many people who have been diagnosed as borderline,
[00:55:40] and yes, who meet the criteria as laid out in the DSM for borderline personality disorder,
[00:55:45] we know that they're actually complex trauma people.
[00:55:49] We know that when they work a trauma recovery, it's not that they had this personality disorder,
[00:55:55] personality was disordered, it was something inside them.
[00:55:58] To hear people talk about personality disorder, you'd think of there's something growing inside
[00:56:02] them called borderline personality.
[00:56:04] It's not.
[00:56:05] When they resolve trauma, suddenly they don't look like borderlines anymore.
[00:56:09] Weird that.
[00:56:10] The point is that bypassing is kind of a rampant.
[00:56:16] It's not just limited to self-help and the fact that a medical provider told you
[00:56:22] they had something.
[00:56:23] Take a closer look.
[00:56:24] Again, it's not that again, I don't think there's a widespread thing of medical providers trying
[00:56:32] to gaslight in anybody into thinking that they have a thing that they may not have.
[00:56:36] All I'm saying is that look bypassing is everywhere.
[00:56:40] Once we kind of get used to looking for it and asking questions about like is this
[00:56:48] label or is this concept enabling me or anybody to trying to advertising that's going to enable
[00:56:56] me or anybody to bypass the tough questions of what is this all about?
[00:57:00] What do I really have to do here?
[00:57:02] That's a flag.
[00:57:04] Bypassing is a foot.
[00:57:06] Yeah.
[00:57:08] Well done.
[00:57:11] Thank you for chatting about this with me.
[00:57:16] Yeah.
[00:57:18] It's kind of a tricky thing to talk about, but we thought it would be worthwhile because I think we do see a lot of people talking about it.
[00:57:25] We thought it would be useful to kind of try to explain what it is and how to recognize it and when to just say,
[00:57:32] okay, this sounds a little like bypassing, but it's probably fine and pretty harmless and when to say,
[00:57:38] okay, this might be a bit of a red flag and I need to just be a little bit on guard here.
[00:57:43] So hopefully we have eliminated this a little bit for people.
[00:57:48] But before we wrap up, Dr. Glenn, you also had some shout outs that you wanted to make.
[00:57:53] I have some shout outs, Jean.
[00:57:55] I love shouting people out.
[00:57:57] So as y'all know, I know a lot of people in Texas these days.
[00:58:03] Y'all.
[00:58:05] Y'all.
[00:58:06] And so I feel-
[00:58:07] As a New Yorker, it's like I can't even get it out of my mouth.
[00:58:11] I feel like I don't-
[00:58:12] It's very uncomfortable for me.
[00:58:13] I don't know if it's cultural appropriation.
[00:58:16] I'm a kid from Iowa who lives in Chicago.
[00:58:18] I don't know if I can say y'all.
[00:58:21] I'm just like, hey you guys.
[00:58:23] And then people are like, I can't do the y'all.
[00:58:28] Twas my birthday.
[00:58:30] Yes.
[00:58:31] And every year I ask folks to consider for my birthday making a donation to our organization SeekSafely.
[00:58:41] These days most of those funds go to produce this very podcast that you're listening to.
[00:58:47] And I said, so I had my fundraiser up for a few days and I said, hey guys if we hit the goal,
[00:58:54] if we hit 2,000 Clambos, I'll go ahead and I'll just shout out everybody who donated.
[00:59:01] And we did.
[00:59:03] Amazing.
[00:59:04] We totally had 2,000 Clambos.
[00:59:05] So instead of just giving like a blanket, Jean just watched me put on my reading glasses.
[00:59:09] Oh my god.
[00:59:10] They're cute.
[00:59:11] I like them.
[00:59:12] Oh boy.
[00:59:13] So anyway, I wanted to give a shout out.
[00:59:17] I'm going to shout out the people, so it was a Facebook fundraiser.
[00:59:20] I know there are people who donated on Instagram as I'm looking at Instagram.
[00:59:25] Many of folks Instagram names are wacky and.
[00:59:30] Yeah, Instagram makes it kind of hard to tell who is who.
[00:59:34] So I mean, we love you all and we're grateful to all of you.
[00:59:37] We do.
[00:59:38] So I'm going to stick with the Facebook donors and they were as follows.
[00:59:43] Dr. Jamie Caballero, one of my best friends.
[00:59:47] Thank you, Jamie.
[00:59:48] Megan Dollarheide from Texas.
[00:59:50] Y'all.
[00:59:51] Dude, y'all.
[00:59:53] Chantel Incandella.
[00:59:56] Love her to death.
[00:59:57] She's an opera nerd.
[01:00:00] Carolyn Myers from IMA.
[01:00:01] Britt Barkholtz, the caffeinated therapist.
[01:00:04] Andy Kilborn.
[01:00:05] He and I used to run the marathons together.
[01:00:08] Sherry Nuss, Cindy Santana.
[01:00:10] Sherri Ann, Kylie Louise, Lauren Hughes, Crystal Page.
[01:00:15] Sherry Henkel, Gwen Weinblatt, Barbazito, Tracy Johnson, Hernandez, Michelle Sickman.
[01:00:23] Christina Mick.
[01:00:25] Oh, I'm going to get this wrong.
[01:00:27] Mick Ackerm.
[01:00:29] Ackerm?
[01:00:30] I'm so sorry, Christina.
[01:00:31] You know who you are.
[01:00:32] I'm sorry.
[01:00:33] Joy Thompson.
[01:00:34] Donald Lynn Bernal.
[01:00:36] Laura Langenberg.
[01:00:38] Wendy Lynn Rabo-Rosen.
[01:00:40] Melissa Martian.
[01:00:42] Me Einsel.
[01:00:44] Boy, I said the Instagram names were wacky.
[01:00:47] I'm just butchering these.
[01:00:48] I'm so sorry guys.
[01:00:49] You were so nice to contribute to my fundrais.
[01:00:51] I have no idea how to say some of these names.
[01:00:53] Wendy Potter, that's a good one.
[01:00:54] Kelly O'Brien, which is about the most Irish name I could think of this side of Glenn Patrick Doyle.
[01:01:00] Michelle Ray Heim.
[01:01:02] Sheila Trafton, Diane DeAngelo, Megan Wiseman, Wendy, all of us and Vicki Tippins.
[01:01:08] Thank you all so much for your donations.
[01:01:11] Amazing.
[01:01:12] Thank you everybody so much.
[01:01:13] Yes.
[01:01:14] We love y'all.
[01:01:15] We will be back here probably the week after next with another conversation.
[01:01:20] Yes.
[01:01:21] About self-help.
[01:01:22] So thank you everyone.
[01:01:23] Red flags.
[01:01:24] If you loved, hey, if you love this podcast, go on over to Apple Podcast.
[01:01:29] Give us a five star ring.
[01:01:31] Give us a review even.
[01:01:33] And if you hated the podcast, just forget I said anything.
[01:01:39] If you hated the podcast, we are sponsored by the James Arthur Ray podcast.
[01:01:43] So head on over and give him a terrible number.
[01:01:47] We will see y'all later guys.
[01:01:49] Yeah.
[01:01:50] All right.
[01:01:51] Thank you.
[01:01:52] Thank you for listening.
[01:01:53] Thank you Dr. Glenn for chatting and thank you from Makusha for quieting down after
[01:01:58] just a few minutes she settled in.
[01:02:01] Ciao ciao.
[01:02:02] All right.
[01:02:03] Take care.
[01:02:12] Thanks for listening to this episode.
[01:02:14] We hope that you have found it enlightening and we'd be so, so grateful if you'd share
[01:02:20] it with the seekers in your life.
[01:02:21] We all know at least one, right?
[01:02:23] Until our next episode, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at
[01:02:28] SeekSafely.
[01:02:29] Connect with Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle at Dr. Doyle Says and me Jean at Jean
[01:02:35] C. Brown on Twitter.
[01:02:36] Feel free to send us an email info at SeekSafely.org.
[01:02:41] To support SeekSafely, you can make a secure donation on our website.
[01:02:46] SeekSafely.org slash donate.
[01:02:49] The SeekSafely podcast is produced by Citizens of Sound.