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Avoiding what makes me anxious - that just seems like common sense. If something makes me feel scared or panicky, why wouldn’t I avoid it?
In fact, for many situations, anxiety serves as a clue that a situation should be avoided or that we should be on high alert. When I took Krav Maga (it’s an Israeli self-defense martial art) we learned to avoid the fight first and then, only if it was unavoidable, should we use the skills we were being taught. If you’re walking somewhere at night and see a group of people approaching you, that might be a situation that’s better to avoid if you can.
Avoidance is the instinctual response for a lot of us. Scared of mingling with strangers at a party? You stop going. Felt panicky at the grocery store? You stop shopping in-person and only order online. In fact, we live in a day and time when our avoidance behaviors can be supported through things like grocery delivery, social media, and online shopping.
It seems simple, right? Just avoid the things that scare you. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. Avoidance behaviors only reinforce anxiety over the long-term and even make it worse. If you start avoiding everything that makes you anxious, you might just end up not able to go anywhere or do anything. I’ve worked with folks whose lives ended up restricted to their room or house without any reduction in anxiety.
Furthermore, things can really start to get out of control if we start using substances, food, sex, or other compulsive behaviors to avoid our anxious thoughts and feelings. This is a logical extension of our early avoidance behaviors which give short-term relief but do not effectively reduce our anxiety over the long-term. We’re still looking for ways to feel better and nothing works faster than substances or compulsions. However, like our early avoidance, compulsive behaviors give short-term relief but often exacerbate our symptoms with time.
Anxiety can be managed more effectively with what’s known as approach behaviors or learning to cope with anxiety, not through avoiding the situation, but by moving closer to it and learning how to cope more effectively.
This is initially the more difficult approach because it requires work and courage on our end. We have to be willing to do the work of learning and implementing healthier coping mechanisms and to literally face our fears. This is not work to be taken lightly but it will not only more effectively reduce our anxiety but also give us a strong foundation for dealing with life’s other difficult feelings like sadness, grief, or anger.
You might be asking yourself how you can implement more approach behaviors for your own anxiety. Here’s a few of my tips:
Accept that negative feelings are inevitable.
We talk a lot in therapy about coping skills, emotional regulation, and other strategies that are designed to change how we feel or at least make it less painful. This can give the impression that the goal of personal growth is to eliminate all painful or negative feelings.
That’s complete BS. Its impossible to never have negative or painful feelings and if you’re expecting that (even subconsciously) this can set you up to feel like a failure when it doesn’t happen and complicate your symptoms and your recovery.
Some anxiety is normal and natural. Anxiety, at its healthiest form, is our body’s built in warning signal and is there to protect us. All painful or negative emotions are a normal part of life and only become a target of therapy if they’re interrupting our ability to function at work, home, or with the people we love.
So while you begin trying to manage your anxiety more effectively, let’s also work on accepting that some painful or negative feelings are inevitable and its part of our life’s work to get better at experiencing and managing them.
Build your anxiety coping toolbox.
Do not start approaching the things that make you anxious until you complete this step.
The difficulty with approach work is that it’s going to initially increase your anxiety as you get closer to the things that scare you. If you do that without being able to cope effectively, you can damage your recovery process and your mental health.
First, spend some time (like up to a year or two) learning and practicing healthy coping skills for anxiety. Get so good at managing your symptoms so that you feel confident in your ability to handle whatever anxiety arises.
You can do this work in a few ways. A therapist will definitely make this process faster, easier, and more efficient. But you can do the work on your own too. It just takes doing some research and taking the time to experiment and practice with different strategies.
Another warning here, any coping skill is going to take time to work at its optimal level so give yourself a good 90-180 days before giving up on a coping skill. Give it and yourself time to work!
Get support.
Anytime you’re making serious changes in your life it’s important to get support. Again, a therapist is a great resource but you can also use things like online groups, forums, or even close and supportive friends.
The important thing is to have a place where you can bounce ideas around, lament about your struggles, and get ideas and support from others. Like any journey, learning to approach anxiety instead of avoid it has its ups and downs and its good to have a shoulder to lean on as you go.
Avoiding anxiety is an understandable and normal, yet misguided, strategy to protect ourselves from the pain of fear and panic. Unfortunately, despite it reducing the immediate symptoms, it doesn’t do anything to reduce our anxiety in the long-term (and can, in fact, make it worse.) Learning to approach what makes us anxious, and even more importantly, learning to cope with anxiety more effectively is how we will be back in the driver’s seat of ourselves, our emotions, and our lives.
Leave a comment below about what you’re going to start doing this week to help you mange your anxiety in a more approach-oriented way.
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