Avoidance Behavior: Examples, Impacts, & How to Overcome

What Is Avoidance Behavior?

Avoidance behaviors are any actions people use to escape or distract themselves from difficult thoughts, feelings, and situations. These can look like avoiding new job opportunities, career advancements, relationships, social situations, recreational activities, and family get-togethers. People use avoidance as a coping mechanism for pain, trauma, and other mental health issues.

It can be understandable to avoid dangerous situations or avoid peer pressure, but avoidance is more than just not wanting to feel uncomfortable. Avoiding something can make you feel in control. However, depending on what you are avoiding, avoidance doesn’t always signify true control. Long-term, these behaviors can exacerbate other issues going on in your life.

Avoidant behavior can be a symptom of mental health issues like:

• Social anxiety disorder
• Panic disorder
• Avoidant personality disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Avoidant attachment
• Abandonment issues
• Toxic shame
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Toxic relationships
• Disorganized attachment

Examples of Avoidance Behavior

Avoidance behaviors can present in several ways depending on the person and situation. Some individuals may engage in escapism, drug and alcohol use, daydreaming, or burying their emotions. While these behaviors can provide temporary relief, they can ultimately worsen a problem as individuals avoid working toward solutions.

Below is a list of avoidance behaviors:

• Escapism
• Drug and alcohol misuse
• Wishful thinking and maladaptive daydreaming
• Burying emotions instead of processing them
• Self-isolation
• Avoiding eye contact
• Lowering the voice when speaking
• Leaving gatherings early
• Making up excuses to avoid attending a social gathering
• Chronic procrastination
• Canceling plans last minute
• Not answering calls or texts
• Avoiding certain places at certain times

Are You Using Avoidance Behaviors?

Detecting avoidance behaviors requires open honesty with yourself. Examine how you act around specific triggers and situations, ensuring to look for noticeable patterns. Recognizing these norms can help you determine how to address your avoidance.

Ask yourself the following questions if you think you may be engaging in avoidance behavior:

• Why am I avoiding this?
• How long do I plan to avoid?
• When was the last time I completed the behavior instead of avoiding it?
• How does my avoidance make me feel?
• How does my avoidance impact others?
• Whose idea is it for me to avoid this?

Types of Avoidant Behaviors

You could avoid an endless list of situations, feelings, thoughts, or people. However, avoidance behaviors generally fall into a few categories that encompass different aspects of life.

Below are the types of avoidance behaviors:

Situational Avoidance

Situational avoidance refers to avoiding specific situations or putting yourself at risk of being in the situation. This behavior could involve one location, person, or scenario that makes you uncomfortable, whether because of past experiences or the fear of future problems. For instance, you may avoid the dentist if you have dentophobia or the coffee shop your ex frequents.

Cognitive Avoidance

Cognitive avoidance means avoiding specific thoughts. This level of avoidance can be intentional or unintentional, as your brain may take over and move avoidance to the unconscious. In these cases, your mind may feel blank or full of fantasies and positive thoughts that distract from unwanted thoughts.

Protective Avoidance

During protective avoidance, you go out of your way to engage in behaviors that offer the perception of safety. This type of avoidance is based on the idea that modifying your environment means you have nothing to worry about. These behaviors could be linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder and involve checking, cleaning, or using “good luck” charms.

Somatic Avoidance

Stress and anxiety produce a physical response in your body. Somatic avoidance aims to limit those physical responses. Of course, no one wants to feel anxious, but this level of avoidance restricts you from doing any fun, exciting, or adventurous activities that may create the similar emotions. You may choose to avoid exercising, thrill rides, or watching scary movies.

Substitution Avoidance

Substitution avoidance means replacing uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, or emotions with more “pleasurable” alternatives. For example, this process could involve using substances to reduce anxiety or becoming angry to overshadow sadness or worry.

The Anxiety & Avoidance Cycle

With anxiety symptoms, exposure is a widely used treatment. Mental health professionals suggest being exposed to and experiencing a stressful environment decreases anxiety in the long term. Similarly, avoidance decreases short-term anxiety but increases long-term anxiety. The more a trigger is avoided, the greater the anxiety becomes.

Impacts of Avoidance Behavior

When you try to prevent stress instead of allowing yourself to feel your emotions, you give yourself a false sense of control. In reality, you hand over control to the stressor, which does more long-term harm than good. This can become a hard-to-break cycle, leaving you more anxious, triggered, or even depressed. Avoidance behaviors can also wreak havoc on your day-to-day life, forcing you to engage in other negative or maladaptive behaviors.

Impacts of avoidance behaviors could include:¹

• If you’re avoiding a route in your car, it may make you late or cause you to spend more money
• Anxiety-related avoidance may make you lose professional opportunities
• If you’re avoiding certain feelings or conversations, it could hurt your relationships

7 Ways to Overcome Avoidance Behavior

Overcoming avoidance behavior takes time, but the outcome is worth the effort. Avoidance can leave you feeling overwhelmed, paralyzed, and stuck in life. However, small changes can significantly improve how you deal with stress and overwhelm. Consider keeping a journal and replacing avoidance with healthier coping mechanisms. Additionally, seeking support can help you identify the underlying reasons for your behavior and consciously work toward healing.

Here are seven strategies for overcoming avoidance behaviors:

1. Journaling

Journaling for mental health can get the negative feelings out of your head and onto the page. Sometimes, writing down our feelings and reading them aloud helps us process them differently and explore where they come from. Once we sort through some of the mental clutter, we can start to heal.

2. Utilize Stress Management Techniques

Stress management techniques can help people manage and move on from avoidance behaviors. Given that stress can sometimes appear as anxiety or depression, identifying the root cause of an issue or feeling is the first step toward recovery. Stress management provides many ways to deal with overwhelm, no matter the cause, instead of avoiding the issues.²

3. Replace Your Negative Self Talk

A trigger will feel too powerful or too negative when you continuously avoid confronting it. Work to control your feelings by replacing your negative self-talk with more positive and hopeful affirmations. Practice patience as you learn healthier ways to combat anxiety in various situations.

4. Build Your Flexibility & Tolerance

You may feel like situations must go a specific way to be acceptable. This intolerance and inflexibility may keep you anxious. Instead, allow yourself to embrace and appreciate the unexpected.

5. Remember That Bad Experiences Can Help You Grow

Anxiety can make you feel like bad experiences are the end of the world. In reality, these situations present unique challenges that help you learn more about yourself and your capabilities. View difficult events as opportunities for personal growth and developing self-confidence and strength.

6. Develop Coping Skills

Developing healthy, positive coping strategies is essential when overcoming avoidance behavior. Think about your day-to-day routine and imagine what a life without avoidance would look like. Ask yourself, “How do I feel,” “Can I get past this feeling,” or “Could this have been prevented?” These questions will allow you to tap into your emotion-focused and problem-focused coping mechanisms.

7. Seek Professional Help

If you’re avoiding situations or people and cannot cope well, seek the help of a therapist. Due to the complex nature of how avoidance behaviors impact and trigger other mental health issues, finding support at the first sign of struggle is best.³

When & How Can Therapy Help With Avoidant Behavior

Consider therapy if your avoidance behaviors impact your ability to have a full life. Licensed therapists are equipped to help people with avoidance behaviors and feelings, but having a strong therapeutic relationship is more important than the specific modality they provide. Consider family therapy or couples therapy if avoidance impacts your relationships.

Once you find the right therapist, you can create a treatment plan. Go in with an open mind and strive to address the underlying reason why you feel a need to engage in avoidance behaviors. If you’re ready to start healing, start your search in an online therapist directory.