Worry, grief, disgrace, embarrassment, and different uncomfortable feelings usually are not nice. Infrequently it’s fairly regular to keep away from a scenario, individual, place, or factor that may set off an undesirable emotion, however when it interferes together with your every day functioning and/or turns into a problematic recurring situation, it’s clinically outlined as emotional avoidance.
Emotional avoidance is something you do to make an emotion go away or change into much less intense. All of us do it sooner or later however the issue with emotional avoidance is that we normally view the emotion (and the bodily emotions that include it) as harmful or threatening. In flip, many individuals do all the things potential to make the emotion go away or change into much less intense. How do they try this precisely? By means of 5 “methods” – or quite, unproductive coping mechanisms – known as whole avoidance, delicate avoidance, thought avoidance, fear, and security indicators.
In my work as founder and director of the Kentucky Heart for Nervousness and Associated Problems, I deal with many individuals who discover it tough to cease the cycle of emotional avoidance. However it’s potential to do, and treatable, and my sufferers go on to dwell more healthy, fuller, extra assertive lives.
Three Kinds of Emotional Avoidance
One kind of emotional avoidance is simple to acknowledge; whole avoidance is totally avoiding a scenario, or just about something, that triggers an intense emotion. In whole avoidance, we regularly state, whether or not externally or internally, “I don’t do _____” as if it is part of who we’re. Complete avoidance can embody bodily issues or locations like social gatherings, public talking, crowds, theaters, driving on the interstate, open areas, tunnels, and bridges, in addition to emotional processes like apologizing, listening to sure songs, or not desirous to have any contact with somebody who beforehand wronged you.
One other kind, delicate avoidance, refers to being in an uncomfortable scenario however not absolutely experiencing that scenario. I confer with this as “I’m there, however I’m not fully there.” For instance, you get anxious ordering meals at a restaurant. Despite the fact that you order your meals, you by no means make eye contact with the individual taking your order. Different examples embody sitting alone in one other room throughout household gatherings or not talking to somebody in a social scenario, driving your automotive to social occasions “in case” you get anxious and wish to depart early, all the time utilizing the self-checkout line at a grocery store to keep away from folks, not watching a tragic scene in a film, or sitting in an aisle seat at a theater in case you are feeling you’re at risk and “want” to flee.
Thought avoidance, one more emotional avoidance technique, refers to stuff you do to maintain your thoughts off uncomfortable ideas. Examples embody pushing away destructive ideas (which come again), distraction with issues like video video games, TV, music, and even taking a nap. Some of the widespread thought avoidance methods that plagues many individuals is one thing we’re all conversant in – fear.
Fear as an Avoidance Technique and Why it Doesn’t Work
Fear, a technique the place you keep away from the feelings and the destructive photographs of the dreaded end result (that’s unlikely to occur), is commonly misunderstood. As a Christian, I consider all feelings are a present from God, even “dangerous” ones, however as a clinician I additionally know that we don’t must be mastered by feelings like fear and that we are able to dwell in emotional maturity. Fear shouldn’t be solely unhelpful however it could deceive us – Jesus himself tells us to not do it – and therapists know it’s unproductive. In my current guide, Mastering Our Feelings: Biblical Rules for Emotional Well being, I clarify how we are able to expertise emotional transformation. Utilizing my therapeutic experience and offering workouts, worksheets, reflection prompts, and Scripture readings, I assist readers higher perceive considering patterns, emotional triggers, and avoidance behaviors.
Figuring out fear is an important talent in recognizing the method of fear so we are able to management it and hopefully put it out of our minds. Fear shouldn’t be anxiousness, however quite a response to anxiousness. And whereas intentions are good, folks usually attempt to use fear to handle their anxiousness, however it by no means works. Nervousness and fear have a bidirectional relationship; anxious ideas usually result in fear as an try to handle anxiousness however fear as a technique results in extra anxiousness sooner or later.
Drawback Fixing As an alternative of Fear
Fear happens in our brains to shift our consideration away from “seeing” the photographs of the dreaded end result and stopping us from processing the feelings related to that feared end result. For instance, let’s say you get anxious about an unknown bodily sensation in your physique. To deal with the anxiousness, you are worried concerning the bodily symptom. You test Google for hours for what the signs may imply, asking household or pals if these signs are regular, looking out on-line for treatments, and even distracting your self with one thing else. Within the brief time period, you are feeling aid as a result of it looks as if you’re downside fixing.
However actually what you’re doing is feeding the concern and that results in extra anxiousness over time. In reality, most individuals fear about occasions which have a really low chance of taking place. True downside fixing, then again, results in decision and a lower in anxiousness.
Security Alerts – What Are They in Emotional Avoidance
Some of the delicate avoidance methods you could use in emotional avoidance known as a ‘security sign’. It’s something – a water bottle, an important oil, a determine, a cell phone or different machine, or perhaps a particular individual or pet – you should have with you to make you are feeling extra comfy in a scenario that you simply understand as harmful.
Security indicators work by reinforcing the concept that conditions usually are not secure until you might have this object or individual with you. Many individuals situation themselves to handle intense feelings on this manner. In consequence, when the item or individual shouldn’t be there for a perceived harmful / uncomfortable scenario, the limbic system is activated and intense feelings happen. As such, you study to affiliate feeling much less distressed together with your security sign and it turns into a behavior so that you can have it. And it could be that you simply keep away from the depth of feelings within the brief time period however protecting security indicators with you maintains the depth of those feelings in the long run.
It may be essential at instances to have a help individual with you in conditions which can be realistically difficult or harmful, similar to awaiting information from a health care provider or attending a parent-teacher convention, however some folks with an emotional avoidance situation get so used to security indicators that they don’t see them as an issue till they don’t have the merchandise with them.
Tailored from Mastering Our Feelings by Kevin Chapman. ©2025 by Kevin Chapman. Utilized by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
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