Avoidance of difficult emotions is one of the common issues I see clients struggling with. Despite what you may have first thought, avoidance will actually make that anxiety or discomfort worse in the long run.
As Cognitive Behavioral Therapy suggests, the cycle of anxiety typically looks like the: thoughts of “I can’t handle this” or “it is too much,” the feelings of anxiety, and the behavior of avoidance. This cycle will lead to an increase in anxiety, and then an increase in avoidance. This is called the downward spiral. The healthiest way to address discomfort or anxiety is leaning into it. Just by changing your behavior, you can expect to see improvement in anxiety.
In this article, I will take a look at why this is. You will get the chance to look at what your anxiety or avoidance cycle looks like. You will also learn what you can do instead of avoiding it.
What Happens If We Avoid The Difficult Emotions or Situations
I want you to take a second and think back over the past few years. Can you think of anything that you have put off or avoided? Any avoidance behaviors? It could be as simple as getting a flu shot because you don’t like needles, or it could be having a challenging conversation with a friend or partner.
I know I can think of a few times I participated in avoidance behaviors. Not wanting to do these things is a totally normal part of being human! I don’t know a single person that has never put off something because they were nervous or anxious about it. Having to deal with situations that bring up anxiety is a normal part of being human.
Now think about that thing you avoided. How long did you put it off for? A few days? A week? A year? However long you pushed it off, don’t worry, there is no judgment here.
The longer you pushed it off, how did you feel? Did you notice anything? I bet there was a moment of stress relief initially. While working with clients, the longer things get pushed off, the more anxiety there is when it comes time to finally do it.
But Why is that? The answer lies within something I use a lot called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. My guess is you have probably heard about it before. The idea here is that as humans, we have all kinds of patterns and cycles. These cycles are made up of three factors, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
As you can see, for this example, the “behavior” we are looking at is avoidance. Each time someone chooses the behavior of avoidance, it is followed by a brief period of relief. This makes sense, right? You feel relieved that you don’t have to go get that shot or have that talk yet. The problem is that after choosing the behavior of avoidance, the thoughts associated with the task or event will intensify. This then leads to an increase in anxiety, and the cycle keeps on going.
What Happens If We Face The Hard Emotions and Situations
Cognitive Behavioral therapy tells us that we can do one of two things to change this cycle. We can either change our behavior or our thoughts. This is the cool thing about cycles; we only need to change one thing to completely interrupt it. While we can’t directly change our feelings, we can change our behaviors or challenge our thoughts.
The first step is to identify and fill out what your avoidance/anxiety cycle looks like. Remember, we can’t change something if we don’t see it, right?
The second step is to choose which way you want to change your current cycle’s downward spiral. As I said earlier, you can either choose to change your behavior or challenge your thoughts. The cool thing about CBT is this is work you can do on your own. For the sake of this article, let’s just talk about what it would look like to change our behavior, avoidance.
When we make the brave choice to not avoid the difficult emotions or situations, we enter something called an upward spiral. As you can probably guess, this is the opposite of a downward spiral. The more we can confront the things that cause anxiety, the more productive our thoughts become. The more productive our thoughts become, the less anxiety we have. Finally, the less anxiety we have, confront that anxiety, and the cycle keeps on going.
If you were to take one thing from this article, I want it to be that we are taking back control over our thoughts and lives by confronting our anxiety.
It Is Important to Lean Into the Hard Stuff, Not Run Away by Avoiding
One of the most accessible ways to break your avoidance cycle is to change your behavior. If you can stop the avoidant behavior, you will find that unfamiliar situations start to become more manageable (despite what your anxiety was trying to tell you).
When I say this to clients, they usually respond, “well, that is easier said than done.” I have found that saying “it is easier said than done” acts as a built-in excuse. If you believe it is easier said than done, you are giving yourself permission to continue with the behavior you want to change. I have written an article on this that you can read here.
Instead of telling yourself easier said than done, try telling yourself, “lean into it.” As humans, we tend to try to think in black and white. Right or wrong. Good or bad. We do this because it keeps things simple (overly simple!).
If you are thinking in this black and white way, your mind is probably thinking, “this guy is telling me not to run away or avoid, so that means he expects me to run at or confront my anxiety.” Not exactly.
My hope is that you will be able to lean into your anxiety. By just leaning in, you are changing that behavior enough to change the rest of the cycle. As you make this change, you will start to see progress in other parts of your life, and then this will lead you to hopefully even more personal growth!
How Therapy Can Help You Achieve Your Goals
For some, we need a little extra support to keep us accountable and focused. We sometimes need to have someone hold us accountable to have that difficult conversation. This is where therapy comes in.
In therapy, we are looking at ourselves differently. We are taking a different perspective as we explore our own actions. We are sitting with these uncomfortable thoughts instead of running away from them. A lot of therapy is spent leaning into difficult emotions. Realizing there is no reason to run.
Like I said earlier, it is totally possible to work this avoidance and anxiety on your own by using CBT. But sometimes we need another person to help get us going or hold us accountable. If you have a long history of avoiding stuff, it may be a good idea to reach out to a therapist for that extra support. Getting a therapist in your corner is a great way to get that additional support while learning you have all the skills you need to lean into the anxiety you have been running from. A therapist can help you begin to create a concrete action plan to help you start to move forward.
Final Thoughts
The problem with avoidance is that it tends to lead to a downward spiral. This downward spiral is just a fancy way of saying detouring anxiety only brings more anxiety and more discomfort.
Despite what your anxiety is telling you, the best way to deal with it is to lean in. Learning to sit with discomfort instead of running away from it is the path forward suggested by Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
I hope this article has given you a little bit of insight into why avoiding difficult things is not the best way to move forward. If you want an ally to help you lean into your anxiety to achieve personal growth, it is absolutely worth getting started with a therapist. If you are in the state of Maine, we would love to hear from you and discuss how therapy with us can help.
Until next time,
