Today I’m going to share with you a very important factor in anxiety management. I promise I am not exaggerating when I claim that it is, in fact, likely the most important part of anxiety management. No matter what therapy approach is taken, and no matter what the type of anxiety someone experiences, there is one HUGE component of treatment that is necessary in order to our improve our relationship to anxiety.
The tricky thing about this part of treatment is that it goes against all of our intuitive responses to the feeling and experience of anxiety. Anyone who has experienced high anxiety knows just how difficult of an experience it can be. When we are feeling very anxious, everything in our body and mind is tells us that we need to get out of the situation and away from the experience of anxiety itself.
What keeps us in the cycle of anxiety
This brings us to the one very important factor, that if not changed, will keep you in the cycle of anxiety: avoidance. You might be thinking “well yeah… I know that.” Most people will have some awareness of avoidance not being helpful for anxiety.
However, as a therapist, one thing that I consistently find is that people who are seeking treatment to manage their anxiety aren’t often coming to therapy to find strategies to face anxiety. Rather, they are hoping that therapy will give them “tools” to reduce or eliminate anxiety all together. While this is a common desire, we often have to shift our approach and attitude towards anxiety all together in order to really make progress.
If you have approached anxiety management with the goal of getting rid of it or reducing it, I get it! In fact, this is exactly how I approached my own anxiety before I was trained and experienced enough to know better. Even if part of us recognizes that we need to face situations that make us feel anxious, there might be another part of us that secretly hopes we eventually just won’t feel anxious anymore.
You might think to yourself “I need to take control of my anxiety.” Or, you might think “I shouldn’t be in a situation where I feel really anxious until I’m more prepared for it.” These thought patterns are signs that you might be avoiding anxiety.
Sometimes, avoidance of anxiety looks like not putting ourselves in situations where we might feel anxious. Other times, however, it is more subtle than that and we don’t (or can’t) avoid the situation entirely but rather try to have control over our experiences.
More subtle forms of avoidance might look like avoiding an internal experience, a certain behavior or avoiding certain types of thoughts. All forms of avoidance play a role in keeping our anxiety going.
The relationship between anxiety and avoidance
Let’s take a look at the relationship between anxiety and avoidance. Initially, we start to feel anxious about something. As we notice this anxiety, we start to feel uncomfortable, and in an attempt to control this uncomfortable feeling, we engage in avoidance.
The avoidance leads to anxiety quickly going down. In the short term, we get relief from this and an experience of “phew! thank goodness I avoided that.” This relief is often reinforcing, meaning that it keeps us in the cycle of avoiding in the future.
There are some key things that we learn (that aren’t helpful) and don’t learn (that would be helpful) from this avoidance. We learn that the only reason we are ok is because we avoided the situation.
In addition, our brain essentially gets the message that the situation or experience we avoided truly WAS bad, wouldn’t have went well, and that we couldn’t handle it. In the long term, our anxiety stays the same or gets worse.
We don’t learn how the situation actually would have went vs. what our anxiety is predicting. We don’t get to learn if we could actually cope with the situation, even if didn’t go how we would want.
We also don’t learn about our ability to handle anxiety in and of itself, and that anxiety will naturally decrease on its own even if we don’t “do” anything about it. These messages are SO important for our relationship with and long term management of anxiety.
The different types of avoidance
Avoidance can sometimes be more straightforward, while other times it can be harder to spot. There is behavioral avoidance which involves an action, experiential avoidance which involves avoiding the internal experience of anxiety, and cognitive avoidance which involves controlling our thoughts. Here’s some examples:
Behavioral avoidance
-Putting something off/procrastinating
-Not going somewhere
-Getting someone else to do something for you
-Not making a decision/not choosing
-Shortening the experience
-Go somewhere but only if someone else comes with you
-Avoiding certain parts of the experience
-Not “putting yourself out there”- being quiet, not talking, not participating, etc.
Cognitive Avoidance
-Suppressing thoughts
-Worrying
-Ruminating
-Over-analyzing/preparing
Experiential Avoidance
-Using distraction activities
-Scrolling on your phone or social media
-Using drugs/alcohol to not feel anxious (or other difficult emotions)
-Zoning out or imagining that we are somewhere else
Starting to move towards rather than away
Avoidance is all about control and staying away from discomfort. In therapy, we are often helping people shift their attitude about their relationship with anxiety. Rather than expecting to reduce or eliminate it, we work towards expecting, accepting, and allowing anxious feelings.
Any effort to get rid of anxiety ultimately will not be helpful. We can work on recognizing that the experience of anxiety itself is not the problem, but that trying to control our emotional experiences is.
It can also be helpful for us to think about the long term consequences and implications of avoiding. Even if in the short term we feel better, are we able to avoid our anxiety forever? Can we ultimately avoid the experience of all unpleasant and difficult emotions? What important and meaningful things in our life might we be missing out on because we are trying not to experience anxiety?
It might also be helpful to focus on moving towards building a meaningful life for ourselves rather than moving away from discomfort. If discomfort is a part of life, we might as well make sure we are building one that is meaningful for ourselves since we are going to experience it anyway.
Keep Growing!
