A spiritually transmitted infection (STI) is a vibe, a mood, distortion, or unexamined belief, that passes from one person to another through contact and that, unlike its sexual namesake, is treated with communication rather than medication.
The phrase is a deliberate pun on the medical abbreviation, and it circulates in two registers. The broader one belongs to psychologist Mariana Caplan, whose 2010 essay "10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases," drawn from her book Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, cataloged the distortions that spread through spiritual communities: fast-food spirituality, spiritual pride, group mind, the chosen-people complex, and the conviction that one has arrived. In Caplan's framing the contaminant is conceptual, as invisible and insidious as a sexually transmitted disease, and it travels through teachers, groups, and shared enthusiasm rather than through any single relationship. It sits alongside 📝Spiritual Bypassing in the vocabulary of what goes wrong on a spiritual path.
The narrower register is interpersonal: the vibe you catch. Anxiety, cynicism, scarcity, and projected shame move between people through proximity and intimacy rather than argument, and the carrier is often unaware of transmitting anything at all. The metaphor earns its keep in the treatment it implies. A sexually transmitted infection is handled by testing and medication; a spiritually transmitted one is handled by naming it, saying what was felt, asking where it came from, and deciding whether to keep carrying it. The symptom is atmospheric, but the cure is a conversation.
My working definition: unlike something that is sexually transmitted and requires medication, something that is spiritually transmitted requires communication.