Tag Archive for: coaching

The Spiritual Bypassing Epidemic: How You’re Avoiding Life While Pretending to Live It

I’m about to drag your spiritual ass through the mud, and you’re going to thank me for it.

Because while you’ve been floating around in your enlightened bubble, sipping kombucha and posting Instagram quotes about “raising your vibration,” you’ve been committing the ultimate act of self-abandonment. You’ve turned spirituality into another fucking hiding place.

And I’m done watching people destroy themselves with designer trauma avoidance.

Your Spiritual Toolkit is Actually a Weapons Cache

Let me paint you a picture. You’re sitting in your meditation corner, surrounded by crystals that cost more than most people’s rent, telling yourself you’re “doing the work.” But here’s what’s really happening: you’re using ancient wisdom traditions as emotional novocaine.

Every time life gets uncomfortable, you reach for your spiritual toolkit like an addict reaching for their stash.

Feeling angry? Slap on some forgiveness.

Feeling scared? Manifest your way out.

Someone calling you on your bullshit? Time to talk about their “low vibrations.”

You’ve weaponized enlightenment against your own humanity.

The Nice Girl’s Guide to Spiritual Suicide

I spent years watching women turn themselves inside out trying to be “spiritual.” They’d smile while their souls screamed. They’d forgive abusers before they’d even processed the abuse. They’d meditate their way out of feeling anything real.

One client came to me after her third “spiritual awakening” – which was really just her third nervous breakdown dressed up in yoga pants and good intentions. She’d spent five years avoiding therapy because she was “beyond the mind.” Meanwhile, her nervous system was fried, her relationships were disasters, and she couldn’t understand why all her manifesting wasn’t working.

The problem? She was trying to transcend her trauma instead of transform it.

Your Darkness Isn’t Your Enemy – It’s Your Fucking Superpower

Here’s what the spiritual bypassing brigade doesn’t want you to know: Your shadow isn’t something to heal, overcome or transcend. It’s something to integrate, own and weaponize.

Your rage? That’s your boundary-setting system coming online.

Your grief? That’s love with nowhere to go.

Your fear? That’s your survival instinct trying to keep you alive in a world that wants to consume you.

But instead of listening to these messengers, you’ve been shooting them at the door with positive affirmations and essential oils.

The Enlightenment Trap

Real spirituality isn’t about becoming some blissed-out version of yourself that never gets triggered, never feels pain, never rocks the boat. That’s not enlightenment – that’s emotional lobotomy.

Real spirituality is showing up to your life with all your messy humanity intact. It’s setting boundaries that make people call you a bitch. It’s feeling your feelings without trying to “shift your energy” out of them. It’s looking at your patterns without immediately trying to “heal” them.

It’s being human while remembering you’re divine, not trying to be divine while forgetting you’re human.

The Forgiveness Fraud

Let’s talk about the most dangerous piece of spiritual bypassing: premature forgiveness.

You’ve been taught that forgiveness is the highest spiritual act. That holding onto anger makes you “low vibe.” That real spiritual people don’t harbor resentment.

Bullshit. All of it.

Forgiveness that comes before you’ve fully felt your anger is just another form of self-abandonment.

It’s spiritual gaslighting.

It’s telling yourself that your pain doesn’t matter, that your boundaries don’t count, that keeping the peace is more important than honoring your truth.

Your anger is sacred. It’s telling you something important. Don’t you dare forgive it away before you’ve listened to its message.

The “Everything Happens for a Reason” Lie

This phrase should be banned from every spiritual circle on earth.

It’s victim-blaming wrapped in enlightened packaging. It’s a way to avoid the terrifying truth that sometimes shit just happens and there’s no cosmic lesson, no divine plan, no spiritual reason.

Sometimes your trauma isn’t a gift.

Sometimes your pain isn’t a portal.

Sometimes horrible things happen to good people and the only meaning is the meaning you choose to create from the wreckage.

Stop trying to make your suffering spiritual. Start making it yours.

The Detachment Delusion

You’ve confused detachment with disconnection. You think being spiritual means not caring, not feeling, not being affected by the world around you.

That’s not detachment. That’s dissociation. That’s trauma response dressed up as wisdom.

Real detachment is feeling everything fully and then choosing your response. It’s being affected without being controlled. It’s caring deeply while holding lightly.

It’s not about becoming untouchable. It’s about becoming unshakeable.

Your Nervous System Knows What Your Third Eye Doesn’t

While you’ve been trying to open your chakras, your nervous system has been screaming for attention.

While you’ve been raising your vibration, your body has been storing trauma.

While you’ve been transcending your humanity, your animal self has been trying to keep you alive.

Your body knows things your mind hasn’t figured out yet. Your nervous system holds wisdom your spiritual practice ignores. Your trauma responses are intelligence, not pathology.

Stop trying to spiritualize your way out of your biology. Start honoring the genius of your survival mechanisms.

The Boundaries Bloodbath

You pray for peace but won’t set boundaries with people who steal yours. You ask the universe for protection but won’t protect yourself from energy vampires. You manifest abundance but give your power away to anyone who asks.

Setting boundaries isn’t unspiritual. It’s self-preservation.

Saying no isn’t negative. It’s necessary.

Protecting your energy isn’t selfish. It’s sacred.

Your peace is your responsibility. Your energy is your currency. Your boundaries are your lifeline.

Stop outsourcing your protection to the universe and start becoming your own guardian.

The Resonance Trap

You only follow people who “resonate” with you. You only read books that confirm what you already believe. You only listen to teachers who make you feel good about yourself.

This isn’t spiritual discernment. It’s ego protection. You’re creating an echo chamber of enlightenment that keeps you small, safe and spiritually stagnant.

The people who trigger you have something to teach you.

The messages that make you uncomfortable are pointing to your edges.

The teachers who challenge your beliefs are showing you where you’re stuck.

Stop running from discomfort and start running toward it. That’s where your growth lives.

The Integration Imperative

Here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: You don’t need to heal your trauma. You need to integrate it.

You don’t need to overcome your shadow. You need to own it.

You don’t need to transcend your humanity. You need to embrace it.

Your trauma isn’t your wound. It’s your weapon. Your pain isn’t your problem. It’s your power. Your darkness isn’t your enemy. It’s your edge.

Stop trying to become someone else and start becoming more of who you already are.

The Spiritual Rebellion

Real spirituality is rebellion. It’s refusing to be nice when the situation calls for fierce. It’s choosing truth over comfort. It’s picking authenticity over approval.

It’s saying F*ck You to the systems that want you small, quiet and spiritually sedated. It’s using your pain as fuel and your trauma as transformation. It’s turning your wounds into wisdom and your scars into strength.

It’s being dangerous in all the right ways.

The Bottom Line

Your spiritual bypassing isn’t protecting you. It’s poisoning you.

Your enlightened act isn’t serving you. It’s strangling you.

Your positive vibes aren’t raising you. Yhey’re razing you.

Stop using spirituality as a way to avoid life and start using it as a way to fully live it. Stop trying to transcend your humanity and start transforming it. Stop being spiritual and start being real.

Your darkness is waiting. Your shadow is calling. Your full self is ready to emerge.

The question is: Are you brave enough to let her?


Ready to Stop Spiritually Bypassing Your Way Through Life?

If this post lit a fire under your ass and you’re finally ready to stop using spirituality as emotional anesthesia, then you need The Trauma Paradox.

This isn’t another feel-good program about healing your inner child or manifesting your dreams. This is the brutal truth about how your trauma isn’t your wound. It’s your weapon. How your pain isn’t your problem. It’s your power. How your darkness isn’t your enemy. It’s your edge.

The Trauma Paradox will teach you to:

  • Turn your triggers into your greatest strengths
  • Use your shadow as your secret weapon
  • Transform your pain into unstoppable power
  • Stop healing and start integrating
  • Weaponize what broke you

No more spiritual bypassing. No more toxic positivity. No more pretending your trauma is a gift from the universe.

Just raw, real transformation that honors both your humanity and your power.

Get The Trauma Paradox Now

Stop running from your darkness. Start running with it.

Why Women Resist Leadership (and How Shadow Work Sets You Free)

Let’s just name the thing:

A lot of brilliant, capable, intuitive-as-hell women secretly resist leadership.

Not because they don’t want it.

Not because they’re not qualified.

And not because they’re “too emotional” or “too much” or “not enough.”

They resist because leadership – as we’ve been shown it – is often traumatizing.

Yeah. I said it.

So if you’ve ever:

  • Delayed launching the thing
  • Procrastinated on claiming your title
  • Dimmed your voice in a meeting
  • Opted out of visibility
  • Felt exhausted at the thought of leading anything

You’re not broken. You’re not lazy. You’re not lost.

You’re responding perfectly to a system that wasn’t built with your nervous system – or your soul – in mind.

Let’s unpack it, trauma-informed style. Then I’ll show you how to work with your shadow to lead without betraying yourself.


First, the Why: What’s Really Behind the Resistance?

1. Generational Trauma Says Power = Pain

For centuries, women in power were burned, banned, mocked or silenced. That energy lingers. Even if you weren’t punished for speaking up, someone in your bloodline probably was.

So when you think about stepping up, being seen, leading a movement? Your nervous system isn’t thinking, “Hell yes.” It’s thinking, “Am I gonna die?”

Shadow Work Prompt: Where did I first learn that power was dangerous? What happens in my body when I imagine being fully in charge?


2. The Nervous System Sees Leadership as a Threat

Leadership is exposure. Visibility. Responsibility. All of which can trigger the same trauma responses as a bear attack: freeze, fawn, flight or fight.

If your system is stuck in survival, leadership feels like a death sentence. Not because you aren’t “ready,” but because your body still thinks the spotlight is a sniper.

Shadow Work Prompt: What parts of me believe that being seen equals being unsafe? What do those parts need to feel protected and empowered?


3. We Inherited a Patriarchal Model That Doesn’t Work for Us

Most leadership we’ve seen is forceful, rigid, extractive. It leaves no room for softness, for cycles, for the sacred. So we reject it – because it feels wrong. But then we shame ourselves for not wanting it.

Shadow Work Prompt: What leadership qualities have I exiled because they were “too feminine,” “too emotional,” or “too much”? Can I reclaim them as strengths?


4. Imposter Syndrome Is a Trauma Echo

Nearly 70% of women in leadership roles report feeling like frauds.

Translation? We’re leading while dissociated. Leading while afraid. Leading while hiding parts of ourselves. And that’s not leadership. It’s performance.

Shadow Work Prompt: What part of me believes I’m unworthy or fake? Whose voice is that, really? What truth lives beneath the mask?


5. Hyper-Independence Keeps Us Stuck and Small

Many high-achieving women are secretly terrified to be supported. Why? Because being let down, betrayed or dismissed in the past taught us not to trust anyone. So we do it all alone, and then wonder why leadership feels heavy as hell.

Shadow Work Prompt: Where did I learn that needing help was weak? What part of me still believes that if I lead, I must do it alone?


Now, the How: Using Shadow Work to Lead Like Yourself

Shadow work isn’t about fixing you. It’s about finding you—the version you hid to stay safe.

Here’s how it rewires your relationship with leadership:

🔥 1. You Build Safety in the Body, Not Just the Mind

Instead of forcing confidence, shadow work helps you feel safe being seen. That changes everything. When your nervous system feels secure, your brilliance stops hiding.

🔥 2. You Lead With the Parts You Used to Hide

Your rage? Sacred fire.

Your grief? Deep empathy.

Your sensitivity? Strategic edge.

Shadow work teaches you to bring all of it to the table, so you lead as your whole damn self.

🔥 3. You Redefine Leadership on Your Terms

You stop mimicking old models. You birth new ones. You build a business or movement that feels like you, not a costume.


Still With Me? Good. Let’s Burn It Down.

This isn’t about fixing your leadership gaps.

  • It’s about grieving the old stories.
  • Calling back the exiled parts.
  • And leading from wholeness, not hustle.

Leadership doesn’t have to feel like a betrayal.

With shadow work, it becomes a coming home.


5 Stats That Prove You’re Not Alone:

  1. Only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women
    You’re not imagining the gap. It’s real.
    (Fortune, 2024)

  2. 60% of women say they’ve never had a leadership role model who looked or lived like them
    Visibility matters.
    (LeanIn, 2023)

  3. One in three women globally experience gender-based violence
    Trauma isn’t rare. It’s common, and it shapes us.
    (WHO, 2021)

  4. Women are twice as likely as men to say they feel burned out
    The cost of performing leadership is real.
    (McKinsey, 2023)

  5. 70% of women report imposter syndrome in leadership
    It’s not a personal flaw. It’s a cultural symptom.
    (KPMG, 2022)


Final Note

If you’re craving leadership that lets you breathe, rest, rage, and rise—

Shadow work is your map.

You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re on the edge of remembering who the fuck you are.

P.S. Check out SHADOW RISING, my exclusive mastermind for women who want an approach to business and life that gets real results. (Bonus: your clients will RAVE.) As I type this, we have 3 seats remaining for the entire year.

You are your own permission. Take it.

P.P.S. I created a brand new FR∑∑ guide to help women reevaluate – and burn down – dysfunctional businesses. Do you feel like you’ve changed more than your biz? Outgrown your clients? Are you ready to take a more aligned leap in the direction you want? GO HERE.

It’s called THE COACHING INDUSTRY EXPOSED, 15 questions that will likely shatter your coaching practice in a GREAT way. You’ll love it. xo