Avoiding Avoidance: Why Pushing Away Anxiety Backfires

What would you do if your hand touched a hot stove?
 
That is not a trick question. We all pull away. It’s biologically engrained into us that we should avoid pain. And this is not a bad thing! Avoiding pain is a matter of survival. If you did not pull instinctively away from the hot stove, I think we can all agree you would be in a whole world of trouble.
 
Here’s the thing. We pull away from the hot stoves in our mind the same way. Our brain is efficient and wants to avoid pain; it doesn’t differentiate between emotional pain and physical pain. What is your inner hot stove? The looming deadline. The memory of a traumatic event that revisits you when you least expect it. The plane or spider or whatever else sends shivers down your spine or sends your heartbeat through the roof. The interesting person we keep running into that we fear will reject us if we approach them. To our primal sense of survival, it’s all a hot stove.

This means that, if you procrastinate, or stay away from anything that reminds you of a painful part of your past, or get queasy at the thought of asking that person out, you are not crazy, or deficient, or broken. Avoidance is a natural part of the human condition.
 
Good news: If you have a tendency to avoid things that scare you, nothing is “wrong” with you. You are actually immensely human. Your brain is just doing it’s job.
 
The problem is, if you avoid all those triggers, you might miss out on seeing that concert when your favorite band rolls into town, or traveling to that place you have always wanted to go. You might miss out on that potential relationship that lies just beyond the nagging fear of rejection. You might not get that job because you missed the deadline to apply. Later, you realize that this avoidance got you nowhere, and you might find yourself beating yourself up about it. So what do we do? How do we avoid avoiding?
 
The challenge of this work is not to squash the urge to avoid itself, but to take a deeper look at how we respond to this natural protective instinct.
 
Too often, as we become aware of the long-term consequences of avoiding emotional pain, we begin to berate and judge ourselves when we have that knee jerk reaction to run from pain. “I’m so weak. I’m so stupid. What is wrong with me? I’m such a failure.” When you do this, you generate more pain. And more desire to run from it. This creates an avoidance feedback loop in which you always feel… well, stuck.   Training your pain by inflicting more pain doesn’t really work.  The key to breaking free of the avoidance loop is to not create more pain to avoid in the process.
 
With this in mind, the next time you feel that urge to avoid something (and it’s not in line with your values to be avoiding it), try addressing the habit with a simple and counterintuitive trick: be kind to your urge to run. Maybe even be friends with it. You know it’s there to protect you. You know it’s keeping you safe from getting burned on a hot stove.
 
When you greet your urge to run with compassion, you also open a door to hold a dialogue with your avoidance pattern. 
 
Something like: “Hey avoidance: I see you. I hear you. You play a valuable role in protecting me. Thank you for that. And right now, I’m choosing the long-term plan over the short-term pain relief. Don’t worry; this one isn’t a literal hot stove.”
 
Creating a dialogue with avoidance urges takes time, patience, and persistence. This is challenging and courageous work, that of choosing to approach your fears mindfully and compassionately. Therapy can help you in putting together and utilizing a set of tools that works for you.