It makes perfect sense, doesn't it? If something makes you feel terrible, avoid it. If a situation triggers anxiety, stay away from that situation. If certain thoughts are distressing, push them out of your mind.

This logic is so intuitive that it's hard to argue with. And in the short term, it works. Avoid the thing, feel better immediately. Problem solved.

Except it isn't. Because avoidance is playing a game it cannot win.

The Relief Trap

When you avoid something anxiety-provoking, you get instant relief. That relief feels like evidence that avoiding was the right choice. Your brain learns: "That was dangerous. Avoiding it kept me safe."

But here's what your brain never gets to learn: that you could have handled it. That the anxiety would have peaked and then subsided on its own. That the feared outcome probably wouldn't have happened. That even if it did, you would have coped.

Every time you avoid something, you teach your brain that you couldn't have handled it. And the more you avoid, the more your world shrinks.

The Avoidance Cycle

How Avoidance Strengthens Anxiety

Anxiety-provoking situation
?
Uncomfortable feelings arise
?
You avoid or escape
?
Immediate relief
?
Brain learns: "That was dangerous"
?
Next time feels even scarier

The cycle continues, and each avoidance makes the next one more likely.

The Many Faces of Avoidance

Avoidance isn't always obvious. Sometimes it looks like:

All of these strategies share something in common: they prevent you from learning that you can handle difficult feelings without them.

From Practice

I worked with someone who was terrified of public speaking. He'd built a successful career while carefully avoiding any situation that might require him to speak in front of groups.

But then he got promoted. And the new role required presentations.

He came to see me expecting that we'd work on making presentations less anxiety-provoking. We did—but not in the way he expected. Instead of trying to eliminate the anxiety, we worked on him being willing to feel anxious while presenting anyway.

The breakthrough came when he gave his first presentation feeling intensely anxious... and survived. His brain learned something new: "I can feel terrified and still function." That changed everything.

What Actually Helps

The alternative to avoidance isn't gritting your teeth and white-knuckling through things. It's what psychologists call "approach behaviour"—gradually, deliberately facing the things that make you anxious while allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable.

This doesn't mean flooding yourself with your worst fears all at once. It means:

  1. Starting small — approaching situations that are mildly uncomfortable first
  2. Staying long enough — remaining in the situation until the anxiety naturally decreases
  3. Dropping safety behaviours — gradually reducing the things you do to feel "safe"
  4. Repeating — doing it again, and again, until your brain updates its threat assessment

This is essentially what cognitive behavioural therapy does for anxiety. It helps you approach what you've been avoiding, in a structured and manageable way.

The Paradox

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the way through anxiety is through anxiety. Not around it. Not over it. Through it.

Your anxiety has been telling you that you need to avoid things to be safe. But avoidance has been making your world smaller. The only way to expand it again is to feel the discomfort and discover that you can survive it.

In the final post of this series, we'll discuss when anxiety has crossed the line from manageable to needing professional support—and what that support actually looks like.

Understanding Anxiety Series