Avoidance

Fear.

This is at the root of avoidance in some form. Your fear may vary from losing control of yourself or your emotions, losing out on some sort of opportunity, facing the truth, so on and so forth. Regardless, your fear has led to avoidance, which serves the purpose of not having to feel, think, or deal with that thing that is making you so uncomfortable.

Avoidance is present in many disorders such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, trauma, addiction, obsessive compulsive disorders, but can also be experienced by anyone regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, etc. Often times, people are not even aware they are engaging in it. Avoidance creates short term relief because you trick yourself into thinking you have escaped it, but as you may already know, it tends to have the opposite effect in the long term. If you let avoidance take hold of you, it spreads like a cancer leading you to avoid more things and feel increasingly trapped and stuck.

The following is a 5 minute video that provides some insightful information and tips for helping you increase awareness of avoidance and figure out what you want to do about it:

Bill Crawford, Ph.D. on Avoidance

Thanks for reading.

You matter.