How Spiritual Bypassing Kept Me Broke (And Why Feeling Everything Was the Key to Sovereignty)

(lol to the typo in the above image).

I used to think I was calm.

Sitting in the eye of this year's tornado, financial chaos, relationship volatility, a house that wouldn't sell, debt piling up like autumn leaves, I told myself I was handling it all with grace. Look at me, I thought, so centered, so spiritually evolved. I wasn't panicking. I wasn't crying every day. I was just... floating.

Turns out, I wasn't calm at all. I was numb.

And here's the kicker: I'm a breathwork teacher. I literally guide people through feeling their emotions for a living. If I can miss this, if I can spend months, maybe years, mistaking emotional numbness for spiritual calm, then anyone can fall into this trap.

This is probably going to out me as a fraud. But I'm sharing it anyway because I think we need to talk about how spiritual bypassing doesn't just keep us emotionally stuck, it keeps us financially stuck, relationally stuck, and trapped in cycles of self-sabotage that masquerade as "following our bliss."

When "Positive Vibes Only" Becomes a Prison

You know that feeling when you're scrolling through Instagram and every post is about "high vibe living" and "manifesting abundance" and you're over here trying to figure out how to pay rent? Yeah, me too.

But here's what I realized: I had become the poster child for toxic positivity, even to myself.

I was terrified: absolutely terrified: to admit what I was actually feeling. Because what if saying "I don't like where I am" blocked good things from happening? What if acknowledging my frustration, my anger, my deep disappointment somehow cursed my manifestations?

So I repressed it all. I used only positive language that did absolutely nothing to dispel the chaos while helping me become more entrenched in stagnation. The dissonance between what I was feeling inside and what was happening around me was so wide you could drive a truck through it.

I know that everything is an inside job: that our external world reflects our internal state. So it was quite painful to admit that my uncomfortable external reality was somehow my fault, that I was still calling this chaos in. But now I can see exactly how: I was bypassing so hard that I couldn't even access the emotions that needed to be felt and released.

The Beliefs That Were Running the Show

Here's the raw, unfiltered list of limiting beliefs I've uncovered since this epiphany. Because apparently, I'm being called to upgrade, and you can't upgrade what you won't acknowledge:

I'm always behind
There's never enough time
The world rejects me
I'm trapped
Success is built on instability
Money is stable, I am unstable
Nothing ever works out for me
My dreams are out of reach
I'm entitled and delusional
I'm evil and wrong
I deserve to fail
I need to rush, but I'll never get there...so constantly chasing the wind (with everything)
I'm an imposter
I'm a fraud
I'm not really living...this is just a false version; always been an outsider looking in
I never wanted to be here
I'm here against my will
I will never get the attention I seek, which keeps me seeking it

Look at that list. Really look at it. Do you see how many contradictions there are? How many impossible binds? This is what happens when we don't feel our feelings: they get twisted into pretzels of self-sabotage that make no logical sense but feel absolutely true in our nervous system.

The Chaos I Called "Following My Passion"

This year has been a masterclass in what happens when you try to build a business from a dysregulated nervous system while pretending everything is fine.

I quit my job before I was financially stable because that's what I believed you had to do: build from instability, leap without a net. Follow your passion, money be damned, right? Except I've come to believe that advice is only half the story, and it's a half that's designed to keep us trapped. Because when we're not financially stable, we can't make sovereign decisions. We're operating from scarcity, not abundance.

I was piling on tasks, trying to fill an imaginary course launch for April and May when I still hadn't figured out how to sell low-ticket offers. I was completely neglecting self-care: and I mean completely. I couldn't even do basic admin that required my attention. It was like my nervous system shut down everything that wasn't urgent or crisis-related.

My husband and I walked through some of the most volatile times in our relationship as our inner demons surfaced for clearing. The house wouldn't sell after we'd already moved across the country. Debt. Money troubles. All while I'm trying to build this business around my passion for breathwork and communications, feeling like an abject failure and fraud with every passing month.

But here's what I couldn't see then: my nervous system had only ever been accustomed to chaos and instability. So when things got "calm," it didn't register as peace: it registered as danger. My system would create crisis to feel normal again.

When the Breathwork Finally Broke Me Open

This is where WOO Breathwork™ became my unlikely savior. Not because it fixed everything overnight (spoiler alert: it didn't), but because it finally gave me permission to feel everything I'd been avoiding.

You see, breathwork doesn't care about your positive affirmations or your vision board. It cuts straight through the spiritual bypassing to whatever's actually happening in your body. And what was happening in mine was a whole lot of unfelt rage, grief, terror, and disappointment.

The first time I let myself really feel angry during a session: not just intellectually acknowledge that I was angry, but actually feel it in my body: I realized I'd been carrying this emotion for years. Maybe decades. The relief was immediate and terrifying.

That's when I understood: you can't release what you won't feel. And you can't build sovereignty on a foundation of repressed emotions, no matter how many crystals you own or how perfectly you can recite abundance mantras.

The Real Cost of Spiritual Bypassing

Here's what no one tells you about the "love and light" approach to life: it keeps you broke. Not just financially (though that too), but emotionally, spiritually, and energetically bankrupt.

When you refuse to feel your difficult emotions, they don't disappear: they go underground and run your life from the shadows. They show up as:

Self-sabotage that looks like passion following (quitting jobs prematurely, making decisions from scarcity)
Inability to prioritize yourself (because feeling guilty about self-care is easier than feeling whatever emotions self-care might bring up)
Building businesses that drain rather than sustain you (because you're trying to fill internal voids with external validation)
Chronic feelings of being behind or not enough (because you're constantly trying to outrun your own feelings)

I was so afraid of admitting I didn't like where I was because I thought that somehow made me ungrateful or spiritually immature. But the truth is, letting yourself feel mad, sad, disappointed, frustrated: allowing yourself to say "I don't like this": this is what actually helps you release and move forward.

The dissonance between what I was feeling and what I was telling myself was so wide that it kept me in a constant state of internal conflict. And you can't build anything stable from that place.

Building From Stability, Not Instability

One of my biggest revelations this year has been recognizing the difference between false calm and sovereign calm. When you've only known chaos and instability, numbness can feel like peace. But true sovereignty comes from being able to feel everything and still make conscious, aligned choices.

I'm now committed to building a business model that works with my needs and nervous system, even if it means releasing what I thought it would look like. This means:

Prioritizing financial stability before making big leaps (revolutionary concept, I know)
Building from a place of self-care, not self-sacrifice (putting myself first isn't selfish: it's sustainable)
Creating offers that meet people where they are while being scalable as they become successful
Releasing attachment to outcomes while practicing persistence as a daily commitment, not a one-time decision

The old model of "follow your passion and the money will follow" assumes you have the privilege of financial instability. But for most of us, financial insecurity creates the exact conditions that make it impossible to build anything sustainable.

(literally melting into my yoga mat)

Persistence as Practice, Not Performance

Here's what I'm learning about persistence: it's not about never failing or never feeling like a fraud. It's about continuing to show up even when: especially when: you feel like you don't know what you're doing.

This year has taught me that feeling like an imposter isn't evidence that I'm not qualified to do this work. It's evidence that I'm human, that I'm still growing, that I haven't bypassed my way out of the messy middle of transformation.

And maybe that's exactly what makes me qualified to guide others through their own messy middles.

Because if a breathwork teacher can spend months mistaking numbness for calm, if someone who literally teaches people about nervous system regulation can build her business from a dysregulated state, then self-sabotage and spiritual bypassing can happen to anyone.

The work isn't about becoming perfect or enlightened or beyond difficult emotions. The work is about becoming willing to feel it all and build from there.

Ready to Quit Your Sh*t?

If this resonates: if you're tired of the "positive vibes only" approach that keeps you stuck in cycles of self-sabotage: I've created something specifically for you. For real.

My Quit Your Sh*t bundle is designed for self-saboteurs who are ready to stop spiritually bypassing their way through life and start building something real from a place of honest self-awareness.

Because here's the truth: your self-sabotage patterns aren't character flaws. They're nervous system strategies that once kept you safe but now keep you small. And the first step to changing them is getting brutally honest about what they actually are.

This year has been one of the hardest of my life: financially, emotionally, relationally. But it's also been the year I finally stopped pretending everything was fine and started feeling everything that wasn't.

And that, it turns out, was the beginning of actual sovereignty. Not the Instagram-perfect version where everything flows effortlessly, but the real version where you can feel all of it and still choose to keep building.

Because persistence isn't about never falling down. It's about getting up each time with a little more self-awareness, a little more self-compassion, and a little less attachment to looking like you have it all figured out.

The path to sovereignty isn't paved with positive affirmations. It's built on the foundation of finally being willing to feel everything you've been avoiding: and discovering that you're strong enough to handle it all.