Why Spiritual Communities Sometimes Get Crisis Wrong

A four-part series on the dark night of the soul, spiritual community, and building from Creative Orientation

Spiritual Community and Mental Health

The Post That Started This Conversation

Recently I came across a post in a spiritual community online. Someone had shared that they were going through what felt like the darkest period of their life — not the kind of darkness that feels like a threshold, but the kind that feels like an ending. The comments came flooding in, and almost all of them followed the same pattern.

Encouragement. Reframes. Spiritual frameworks. Well-meaning words about transformation and divine timing and the soul’s journey. A few people shared their own experiences of emerging from dark times. Almost everyone was trying, in their own way, to help.

And yet something about it sat uncomfortably with me. Because while the responses were loving, they were also — almost universally — trying to fix something. To move the person from where they were to somewhere more comfortable. To turn the darkness into something meaningful before it had even been fully witnessed.

One person, to their credit, gently mentioned professional support — noting that no amount of spiritual practice should replace it when someone is in genuine distress. That comment stood out, because it was the only one that held both things at once.

Why We Rush to Fix

Here’s what I think is really happening when spiritual communities respond to crisis in this way. It’s not that the responses are wrong, exactly. It’s that they’re often coming from survival orientation — just directed outward rather than inward.

When we witness someone else’s pain, our nervous system responds. We feel it — or something close to it. And then, quite naturally, we want to make it stop. Not necessarily because we’re being unkind, but because sitting with unresolved darkness in another person is genuinely uncomfortable. It activates our own fear. It reminds us of our own times of not knowing.

So we reach for what we know. We offer the frameworks that have helped us. We share the wisdom we’ve gathered. We try to light a candle in someone else’s dark.

All of which sounds beautiful — and sometimes is. But when it’s driven by our own discomfort rather than genuine attunement to the other person, it becomes something else. It becomes a kind of spiritual bypassing — using insight and meaning-making to move someone away from their experience rather than alongside it.

What Spiritual Bypassing Actually Looks Like

Spiritual bypassing is a term coined by psychologist John Welwood to describe the use of spiritual ideas and practices to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, or developmental needs. It’s not unique to any tradition, and it’s usually completely unconscious.

In the context of supporting someone in crisis, it can look like:

• Reframing pain as a spiritual lesson before the person is ready to hear it
• Suggesting that suffering is part of a divine plan in a way that minimises its reality
• Sharing stories of personal transformation that implicitly pressure the person to arrive at the same place
• Using words like ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘your soul chose this’ in response to genuine distress
• Rushing someone toward meaning or acceptance before they’ve had space to simply feel what they feel

None of these are inherently wrong as philosophical or spiritual positions. The problem is the timing and the motivation. When they’re deployed in response to crisis, they can leave the person feeling unseen, unheard, and subtly pressured to perform a kind of spiritual resilience they don’t actually feel.

The Difference Between Witnessing and Fixing

There is a profound difference between witnessing someone and trying to fix them — and that difference lives not in the words we use, but in the orientation we bring.

Fixing comes from a place of discomfort with what is. It is, at its root, a survival response — an attempt to resolve the tension of sitting with something unresolved. It says, even with the gentlest intention: ‘I cannot be with you here in this. Let me help you get somewhere else.’

Witnessing comes from a place of genuine presence. It does not need the other person to arrive anywhere. It says: ‘I see you in this. I am not afraid of your darkness. You do not need to perform your way through it for my comfort.’

Witnessing is harder. It requires us to regulate our own nervous system while remaining open to someone else’s experience. It requires us to trust that the person doesn’t need rescuing — they need accompanying. And it requires us to hold the possibility that sometimes, people need professional support that is beyond what any spiritual community can offer.

What a Grounded Response Actually Looks Like

If you find yourself wanting to respond to someone in genuine distress — online or in person — here are some things that tend to land better than frameworks and reframes:

• Simply name what you see: ‘I see you. This sounds incredibly hard.’
• Ask before offering: ‘Would it help to talk, or do you just need to be heard right now?’
• Resist the urge to silver-line: not every moment of darkness needs to be framed as a gift
• Hold space for both dimensions: ‘Whatever this is — spiritual, emotional, or both — you deserve real support.’
• Mention professional help without making it a deflection: ‘I also want to gently say — please reach out to someone trained to support you through this. You don’t have to navigate it alone.’

That last one matters more than almost anything else. Spiritual community is valuable and real. And it is not a substitute for mental health support when someone is in genuine crisis. The most grounded practitioners I know hold both of these things without collapsing them into each other.

A Note to Healing Practitioners

If you are a healer, coach, or wellness practitioner reading this — this conversation is particularly relevant to you. The people who come to you often arrive at the edges of what they can hold alone. And your role, while genuinely significant, has limits that matter.

Knowing when to refer. Knowing when the work in front of you is beyond the scope of what energy healing or coaching can hold. Knowing when someone needs a psychologist or a GP or a crisis line alongside whatever you offer — that discernment is not a limitation of your work. It is part of the depth of it.

The most ethical and effective practitioners are the ones who can say: ‘What you’re experiencing deserves more than I alone can offer. Let’s make sure you have the full support you need.’

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to Lifeline or Beyond Blue for professional support.

This post is part of the When Darkness Meets the Practitioner’s Path series:

• • Part 1: Why Spiritual Communities Sometimes Get Crisis Wrong — This one
  • Part 2: Spiritual Emergency vs Mental Health — Know the Difference — coming 13th June
  • Part 3: When the Dark Night of the Soul Meets the Practitioner’s Business — coming 20th June
  • Part 4: Beyond Survival — What Transformation Is Really Asking of You — coming 27th June