An issue cropping up a lot in my work with folks in this season of the pandemic is avoidance.
Not wanting to do something, procrastinating on this thing, stressing over that thing, completely forgetting the other thing, until we are back at the beginning or something bad happens…like…a consequence for not getting this something done on time or …at all.
I’m not only talking about avoidance that shows up in our work or because of our daunting, never-ending to-do lists, but also the avoidance that results from wanting to push away emotional discomfort. Sometimes the two are deeply linked, more than we often think. This post will give you some tools for when it’s time to look yourself in the mirror and face what you’ve been avoiding, whatever that may be.
Here are some ideas inspired by my work with clients on the topic of avoidance:
1) Explore what contributes to your desire to avoid.
It might be ironic, that in order to help your avoidance, you must stop avoiding the reason you are avoiding in the first place. Avoidance is often a coping skill, a strategy we use in the face of overwhelm, threat, insecurity, perfectionism, pressure, fear, etc.
It might be helpful to break down your experience to the simplest feeling word you can find. For example, I am afraid of what my boss will think of me if I send this email with an error. Therefore, I am avoiding sending this email until it feels perfect. Once you whittle it down to a basic emotion, it’s a bit easier to deal with than the layers and layers your thoughts and feelings about your feelings have added or even distracted from your original experience.
Discomfort is a common reason I’ve found amongst by own clients for why they avoid certain situations or tasks or conversations. The icky feeling they get deep down that something is not okay can often be a trigger for our nervous system’s stress response: fight, flight, flee, even fawn (neutralizing a threat by befriending it). When we avoid, we are often fleeing to get away from a stressor or threat. Our ancient evolutionary biological systems cannot often distinguish a true threat to our survival from a stressful experience.
For the average person in 2022, our day-to-day modern-day stressors do not usually include life or death situations. They mostly include chronic stressors that have to do with our jobs, our relationships, or our sense of self. If we can pinpoint how our avoidance is trying to serve us, as in, get us as far away from our stressor as possible, then we can learn to relabel these threats and recalibrate our response system. We can learn to soothe our nervous systems with mindful movement or self-care, teaching our brains that this task will not hurt me, this person’s opinion of me may sting yet it does not change who I am, this conversation is challenging, yet it is survivable.
Try asking yourself:
What am I truly avoiding?
Why am I avoiding that thing?
How is avoidance trying to serve me? Am I fleeing because my nervous system is activated and stressed?
Am I avoiding something because it makes me feel uncomfortable? Or another emotion?
What can I do with that emotion instead of avoiding it?
How can I soothe, self-care, or move my body to remind it I am safe and okay even if I am uncomfortable or stressed?
2) Create a simulation in your mind.
This idea comes from the practice of exposure therapy for anxieties and phobias, as well as trauma. The idea is that you practice simulating in your mind the very thing you have a strong avoidance towards. If you are avoiding household chores that have gone neglected too long, you might imagine yourself taking the first step to get up and collect all the dishes to place them in the kitchen or collecting all the laundry needing to be done. The idea is that step-by-step your brain is getting used to the very thing it has been blocking out via avoidance.
The simulations work two-fold, 1) your brain literally practices the task even in your imagination, which makes it a bit easier to do the task in real life and helps you anticipate some difficulties you might have along the way 2) you are breaking down tasks into accessible steps, which makes the whole thing a little less daunting by the time you actually decide to approach the task in real life.
3) Break down tasks
When we are overwhelmed, it is usually because we are feeling many things about one or several other things at the same time. My clients who live with ADD/ADHD have to make common use of the skill of breaking down tasks in order to make tasks more accessible to their brains. A helpful question my clients and I have landed on: What is the most accessible thing I can do right now that could help? Then do that. Doesn’t matter how small or ridiculous. For some, it’s standing up, collecting necessary materials, opening the computer, starting the document/email, writing down next steps…
4) Color code tasks
Along with this idea of breaking down tasks, it can be helpful to have a system to code tasks or steps of tasks into green, yellow, red. Green, accessible now. Yellow, it’s doable but maybe a bit challenging for one reason or another. Red, feels very challenging at the moment. The idea is to start with the green tasks to build momentum and confidence. Then, if you still don’t feel up to the yellow or red tasks at a later time, you can learn to further break those down into green-coded tasks until those tasks feel more accessible.
5) Organize/prioritize tasks
Great! You’ve learned why you’re avoiding something; you’ve imagined in your mind how to do the thing; you have the accessible steps all listed out. But wait, you have about 10 other tasks you need to repeat this process for, where do you even start in tackling them all? In comes the skill for organizing and prioritizing tasks. For my folks with ADD/ADHD, this is an important skill to learn to externally structure what their pre-frontal cortex (the area of executive functioning) does not. It is important to find a system that works and is intuitive for you, if you don’t like the process or the system you’re using, you won’t use it. Ultimately, find a system that helps you lay out everything you’re expecting of yourself to be done so you can catch early if it is an unrealistic expectation and also so you can prioritize which tasks to do first or in order. Think big picture first, then move into the details of each task once you’ve identified it as a task worth working on at this moment in time. Too often, we get sucked into the minutiae of the tasks that we forget to gain perspective on is this really what I need to be working on right now?
For my visual and tactile clients, I often suggest the use of a dry-erase board or sticky notes. Writing out your items for the day and then placing the one you are currently working on in the center of your workspace/visual field as a practical way to manage focus and keep up with real time prioritization. The other sticky notes can be swapped out at any time to be your “main focus sticky note,” so it is flexible often like our attention and daily demands. Steps can be written on the front of the sticky note or on the back to help with traction towards a bigger item or goal.
Don’t forget a done pile! I encourage clients to have a moment of celebrating the doneness of a task, before skipping right to the next thing. This is an opportunity to “complete the stress cycle” by saying to yourself: you know that thing I was wildly stressed about before? I did what it took to complete this task. Yay me! I did it! It is an opportunity to build confidence and competence for future challenges, as well.
I hope this practical guide for how to work with your own avoidance feels accessible and applicable to what you find yourself avoiding, if not, stay tuned for Part 2 of this post. Remember that you’re in good company, which is why I felt inclined to write this post in the first place!
Take a moment to also remind yourself that you’re doing the best you can with what you’ve got at this moment in time. If you feel that you might need more personalized help with your avoidance or notice your avoidance significantly impacting your functioning in different areas of your life: work, school, home, relationships, etc., then reach out to us and we will match you with a therapist available to help you address your avoidance more specifically.