Avoidance

“If a horse throws you, you need to get back onto the horse as soon as possible” because if you don’t then there is a real chance for anxiety and fear of riding to creep in. In a nut shell, this is the problem with avoiding situations that seem dangerous (due to anxiety) but really are not: you learn to condition your fear response by not getting back on the horse! On the other hand, when there really is something threatening or dangerous it makes sense to avoid. By avoiding danger, when it is real, you enhance the chances of surviving and your anxiety or fear responses serve a useful function. However, when you avoid something that is not truly dangerous, you fail to see the reality of the situation and there is no hope of learning that the fear is unjustified! For this reason, avoidance is associated with strengthening the anxiety response and can lead to the development of Anxiety Disorders.

When you avoid you learn to fear the thing you avoid, and when you confront your fears, you learn to see them for what they truly are. When you think of it this way, the old saying “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” really makes sense. In actuality, when you repeatedly avoid something that is either a little dangerous (and you make mountains out of mole hills) or not dangerous at all, you condition the part of your brain involved in the fear response. This little structure that exists in the mid brain, which scientists have recently discovered is involved in fear conditioning, is called the Amygdala. By avoiding you essentially tell this part of the brain to remind you to be afraid when anything like the situation you avoided comes up. Your anxiety is then triggered which makes you want to avoid the situation. Remember though, if you avoid you actually strengthen the fear response and a vicious cycle of fear and avoidance can become activated resulting in the development of an Anxiety Disorder.

As you will learn in this program, it is only by facing fears and not avoiding that you can reverse this harmful pattern. Avoidance though is often tricky and consists of both obvious forms of avoidance and subtle forms of avoidance. Obvious Avoidance is equivalent to simply not going into a fearful or anxiety producing situation. Subtle Avoidance is equivalent to going into the situation but needing some type of safety behavior to be in it, so as to tone it down and make it more tolerable. Some common examples of Subtle Avoidance include having a safe person go with you somewhere (or you would not go for fear of having some type of anxious experience), having to bring tranquilizers with you even if you do not take them (like Xanax, Ativan, Valium, etc.), taking a cell phone wherever you go so can call the safe person if you need help, going to a social event and immediately going to the restroom to avoid the initial anxiety of being in the situation, or not looking people in the eye. People with Panic Attacks out of the blue will subtly avoid any sensation that is linked to the panic and tend to limit arousing activities. Whatever the type of avoidance, it is only by learning to gradually face fears and not avoid that people can overcome their fear response!