Is Your Spirituality Making You Mean?

How Emotion-Shaming Spiritual Teachings & Beliefs Might Cause You To Lose Empathy In The Face Of Human Suffering

Take a moment and think about the last time something scary, sad, unjust, tragic, or devastating happened to you. Then think about what the “spiritual” people in your life might have said, in a misguided attempt to make you feel better. Or maybe more accurately, to make themselves feel less helpless or overwhelmed in the face of your painful emotions.

I’m thinking of the time I had to leave my home as a wildfire refugee because the California wildfires were less than a mile from my house, which tipped the Air Quality Index over 600. We could not breathe without coughing inside my house, even with the air purifiers on. It was quite terrifying to realize that California might become uninhabitable because of climate crisis, and we might lose our home. We had to drive five hours to find clean air and get ourselves safe. When I posted about this on social media, some asshat told me I had manifested this wildfire and smoky air with my impure thoughts, and if only I cleaned up my fiery, smoky thinking, the fire would disappear and the air around me would magically clear up.

I was shocked by the ridiculousness and magical thinking of imagining a clear air bubble just around on my head if I cleared up my thinking- and not around the heads of other smoky thinkers. But I was even more shocked by the utter lack of empathy when my family and I were legitimately frightened and in danger. This was the second time in two years that we had to leave our home because of wildfires.

This guy considered himself “spiritual,” but his spirituality was making him not only delusional, but flat out mean. He wasn’t the only one.

It made me realize that some people really can’t handle feeling the emotions that arise in the face of random tragedies that are out of our control. Maybe it makes people feel better- and offers a strange solace or feeling of having more control- to believe that our thoughts create our reality, or our soul chose these random tragedies, or God has a reason for inflicting pain on innocent people.

But if your spirituality is making you mean, we might need to rethink these knee jerk responses to tragedy. I propose we get help treating our traumas so we can improve our ability to tolerate intense feelings, to stay in our bodies and compost our feelings, to train our nervous systems to have more flexibility so we can be with our feelings- and with the feelings of others. If we get help treating our traumas, we can have more emotional range and tolerate feeling our own pain, so we can be more empathic with our own “parts, and also, so we can be more empathic with others who are in pain.

As an empathy-improving exercise, take a moment to think about how unempathic these kinds of emotion-shaming “spiritual” messages might feel when applied to someone in emotional pain who needs real empathy.

Your soul chose this.

Everything happens for a reason.

God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened.

It is what it is.

Love is the opposite of fear.

Man up, buck up; suck it up.

Don’t worry, be happy.

There's a lesson to be learned in this.

Look for the gift in the situation.

That's just your ego talking. 

You’re too sensitive.

Focus on the positive. 

This too shall pass.

Take a chill pill.

Be thankful and stop complaining.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

It didn't happen to you; it happened for you.

Be here now.

Get out of your victim story.

What you see in me is just a mirror of yourself.

That’s just a story.

Look for the silver lining.

Have you tried medication?

Even the Dalai Lama said, “Like anyone else, I too have anger in me. However, I try to recall that anger is a destructive emotion. I remind myself that scientists now say that anger is bad for our health; it eats into our immune system. So, anger destroys our peace of mind and our physical health. We shouldn't welcome it or think of it as natural or as a friend.”

Do spiritual leaders really not realize the damage they do by shaming people for having legitimate, valid human emotions that are meant to protect them and protect others? Do people not realize that their spirituality might be grooming them to be victims of abuse? Or that it could be turning them into perpetrators of insensitivity or even cruelty?

It makes sense though, if you think it through. If I wanted to be a cult leader who got to live by a separate set of rules than the ones I’m preaching, if I wanted to verbally, physically, financially, spiritually, or sexually abuse people with no accountability and no protests from those I considered “less than” myself, I’d definitely have to demonize anger as an unspiritual emotion. I’d have to humiliate people if they tried to call me out, tone policing them to detract from the content of what they’re accusing me of. I’d have to teach people how to check out and dissociate during meditation or prayer so they wouldn’t feel their rage and grief at the way I’m mistreating them. I’d also have to dial down my own shame so I don’t feel bad when I’m controlling, dominating, and exploiting people to prop myself up in my grandiosity and wealth. Shaming people for having real emotions would be good business for me, to the peril of those who listen to my teachings.

If someone refused to buy into my indoctrination, if they felt their feelings and acted in response to them, it would be hard for me to maintain total control. I’d have to kick that person out of my cult or risk getting exposed for the fraud I really would be.