Avoidance & Anxiety

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People often think that avoidance is all about procrastination, avoiding the pain of being thought of as having done a bad job by not doing the job in the first place. And although that is avoidance it can also extend into many areas of your life. 

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Episode Transcript

Richard (00:00):
Hi there everybody.
How was your week?
It's been a bit hot, hasn't it?
I'm glad that it's cooled down abit now so that we can maybe sit
outside in a beer garden orsomething with our friends and
not worry about catching fire orsunburning, our shiny, baldy
heads if you've got one of thoseas well.
But of course that's with theproviso that meeting up with

(00:21):
friends isn't too anxietyprovoking.
I meet a lot of quite lonelyfolk who do actually have plenty
of friends.
They just avoid seeing them.
But for some people feelinglonely might seem a more
preferable emotion than the fearof judgment, which comes out as
social anxiety, and that's thesame for other emotions as well.

(00:43):
If you feel resentful or feeltaken advantage of and
underappreciated, it could beyou're avoiding confrontation of
some sort.
So it's a good idea to lookunderneath what's going on
sometimes.
Because avoidance is thefoundation to pretty much every
phobia that you can put a nameto.
The more that you avoidsomething, the more your

(01:06):
instincts learn that it needs tobe avoided.
And our instincts really onlyhave one way of telling us what
to avoid and what to approach,and that's with the fight or
flight response.
We see a lot of that withclients who have so-called anger
problems because there aremultiple layers to our emotions.

(01:26):
And without some emotionalintelligence when you ask, How
did it make you feel when yourwife said you couldn't go on
that stag weekend?
All they might see is anger,when actually the reason they
were angry was because ofsomething else.
The anger was a response tofeeling hurt, controlled, the

(01:49):
disappointment that she doesn'ttrust him.
That's the initial emotion andanger is the response.
And when we can see that, we canhopefully tone it down a bit so
that we can sit and have theconversation about trust and
love and faith in each other.
Rather than storm outta thehouse in a huff.

(02:10):
But if we don't open up abouthow we feel, then we avoid it
all because we fear judgment ormaybe see any other emotion
except anger as some sort ofweakness.
But of course it isn't.
But if we have this culturalassociation between emotion and
vulnerability, then as a societywe learn that emotions must be

(02:32):
dangerous and need to beavoided.
But avoiding things makes ourworld smaller and smaller.
When we avoid things that pokeour anxiety, not only does that
fuel the fear of the things, butit also reduces our comfort zone
until the only safe place we'vegot is under the duvet.
So there are a couple of thingsyou can do once you acknowledge

(02:53):
that you might have thistendency and you've maybe
identified some lower down deepemotions that have fueled it.
Some things need breaking downthen into bite-sized pieces.
So if you've been avoiding yourfriends,'cause they keep
inviting you to social eventsthat are too big for you to feel
safe in, then you know that youneed to start smaller.

(03:15):
So in this case, you've probablyalready identified in yourself a
fear of judgment from otherpeople.
So that's where you start.
You do something small that putsyou center stage of just one
person.
You learn that you can besomeone's focus for a moment or

(03:36):
even just a few seconds, andyour world doesn't collapse and
they don't rip you apart like ananimal after all.
Maybe that's just making eyecontact, just saying hello to
someone.
Maybe just saying, Hiya, niceweekend?
To somebody that you wouldn'tnormally speak to that often, if
at all.
If you try to jump into newbehaviours with too steep a

(03:59):
climb, it's gonna more thanlikely backfire on you and make
you fear it all the more.
So don't bite off more than youcan chew.
Just plan bite-size things.
If you avoid emotion, if youavoid feeling vulnerable by
opening up to your partner, howhurt you feel when they ignore
your preferences, that's goingto backfire.

(04:22):
But those tiny interactions ofjust saying hello to someone
becomes being able to have smalltalk about the weather or the
football or Love Island orwhatever.
And then one bite sized pieceafter another.
You can go to a house partywithout triggering too much
anxiety.
Now, you're probably never gonnado any karaoke or demo some

(04:43):
break dancing or something, butyou know what?
You don't need to.
But never avoid anxiety.
I'll leave you to that fortoday.
Enjoy your week, and if you're apatron of mine, of course, I
will speak to you again onMonday.
Take care everybody.