How avoidance makes your anxiety (and life) worse [𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 ]

Avoidance is our default response to discomfort.

Whenever we’re faced with a situation that might trigger anxiety, our first instinct is to escape or avoid the situation altogether.

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What does avoidance look like?

• Indecisiveness.
• Not honoring commitments.
• Substance abuse.
• Making excuses or rationalizations for why you can’t do
something.
• Distracting yourself with video games, social media, or
entertainment.

Procrastination is a major sign of avoidance.

Notice that whenever you need to do something uncomfortable, you’ll find yourself mindlessly scrolling on your phone.

It happens almost unconsciously.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that avoidance is the automatic response to anxiety.

Back in the day, those who were efficient at avoiding dangers were more likely to survive and pass on their genes.

Confronting your fears would have quite literally got you killed. So we are kinda wired to avoid our fears.

But in modern-day, this response becomes maladaptive and further aggravates anxiety. Here’s how.

Avoidance gives you temporary relief which reinforces your tendency to avoid.

And every time you avoid an anxiety-provoking situation, you subconsciously strengthen the seriousness of the threat in your mind.

Avoidance reaffirms your inability to deal with the threat and damages your confidence.

So the next time you’re in a similar situation, you’ll feel more anxious than before. This becomes a vicious cycle.

In reality, you could have easily got through that situation.

You can probably think of a few scenarios from your past where you did something that seemed really scary at first, but easy in retrospect.

“Oh that wasn’t such a big deal, I don’t know what I was worried about”

But when you avoid your anxieties, you don’t give your mind the opportunity to learn that you can cope with panic and that the catastrophe you are imagining is unfounded.

Try to catch yourself when you're engaging in avoidant behavior.

And remember that short-term anxiety reduction leads to long-term anxiety increase.

So you have to confront your anxiety. Otherwise, it will get worse over time and your life will become restricted in the worst of ways.

This was a short excerpt from our ebook, "How to Conquer Anxiety"

This short book presents a rare integrated approach to dismantling anxiety — mentally and physically.

You can get it here for free: https://happymenproject.com/resources/ 

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