5 Reasons Why Avoidance Breeds More Avoidance

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Avoidance is something many adults struggle with, especially during episodes of depression.

It can also have strong links to anxiety. A person avoids what makes them anxious, then their avoidance makes them more anxious.

People often feel deeply ashamed of their avoidance, and it can cause problems in their lives, ranging from minor to major. For example, a person might avoid telling their friends they can't attend an event until the last minute, no-show appointments, or ignore early signs of a problem, such as their car making a funny noise or a new health symptom.

To understand your patterns of avoidance, it helps to recognize how avoiding one thing often cascades into other areas of your life.

Let's explore these patterns so you can feel more empowered and less ashamed about your struggles, and discover clues to practical strategies that might actually help.

1. You think "It's not worth doing X if I haven't done Y."

For example, you might feel like you need to solve a bigger area of avoidance before addressing smaller ones, even though tackling the smaller areas can still be valuable.

For instance, there's no point in canceling a $15 subscription I'm not using if I'm still paying for a $50 subscription I'm not using. Or, there's no point in managing one health concern better if I'm not managing another one better.

2. Spillover to related areas

Imagine you're avoiding looking at your mail because you don't want to face your credit card bills. That avoidance can cause you to miss other important mail as well.

Or maybe you're avoiding one part of your financial life, so you stop checking your credit card statements. As a result, you might miss charges that shouldn't be there.

3. Social mechanisms

For example, you're having some financial struggles and don't want to reveal this to a friend, so you dodge their invitation to a lunch at a somewhat pricey restaurant.

Or maybe family members invite you on a cruise. You're avoiding managing a health concern and aren't sure if you'll be well enough to go. Instead of explaining this, you leave the invitation hanging, which can upset or annoy others. Even worse, rather than risk them bringing up the cruise, you avoid all contact with them, cutting yourself off from support.

4. Avoidance leads to worse experiences, which lead to even worse experiences

Let's say your doctor gets mildly annoyed because you only come to see them when you have an urgent issue, and you also bring up a lingering problem you've been avoiding. They wish you'd addressed it sooner.

Doctors are human, so even when they remain professional, that annoyance might show through, especially if your anxiety makes you sensitive to social cues.

This creates a cycle: your medical experiences get worse, which makes you even more hesitant to go the next time.

5. Your belief in your capacity to cope well with challenges is low

We don't avoid just because what we're avoiding is scary. We also avoid because we don't feel confident in our ability to cope with challenges.

When we avoid, the objective evidence shows we're not managing a challenge well. This erodes our confidence in our ability to handle any future challenges.

How this information can empower you

First, I hope you can see that these patterns are understandable. They're not a sign of being a horrible, useless, hopeless person.

Second, when mechanisms are circular, the negative side is that we can enter a downward spiral and quickly start circling the drain.

The less bleak aspect of circular mechanisms is that:

• You can make a change at any point in the circle. This gives you options.
• When you do make a positive change, the benefits have an opportunity to spread out. For example, if you're forced to confront one avoided situation, and you handle it OK, it can spur you on to be less avoidant somewhere else.

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Understanding these patterns shows why avoidance feels so overwhelming, but also points to several ways you can make progress. Now you can see different places where you might interrupt the cycle, instead of feeling like you have to fix everything at once. Just as avoidance can spread in unhelpful ways, small positive steps can create helpful ripple effects throughout your life. If your avoidance causes you to dwell on your weaknesses, you can counteract that by learning about your strengths. Try this guide. Knowledge of your strengths is an excellent way to counter avoidance in personalized ways that play to those strengths.