How to Keep Avoidance from Sabotaging Your Life
🙈 Are you a pro at avoiding?
In part #1 of this post last week, I shared an article in the Washington Post by Luana Marques, PhD headlined “Avoidance, not anxiety, may be sabotaging your life.” (June 16, 2023). We talked about how the three R’s – Reacting, Retreating and Remaining – are common ways in which we avoid uncomfortable situations. In coaching, clients and I work to build self-awareness of these behaviors and find ways to address them.
In this post, I will summarize several approaches Dr. Marques offers to help combat the avoidant behaviors when we recognize them.
Shifting – With this behavior we deliberately challenge our perception of problems as being binary, good vs bad, all or nothing. A client once presented to me with a scenario where he had to pick from two choices for his career: one option was “best” for his career and the other was “best” for his family? How to choose? The first step was backing away from this binary belief and shifting into curiosity about choices that could be good for both.
Approaching – In coaching we spend a lot of time finding ways to “move toward” the point of discomfort, often by taking small, lower-risk steps. If you find yourself avoiding, ask what it would feel like to challenge your tendency to pull away and instead test the waters in the other direction? It’s less about doing a 180 and charging off in a new direction – that’s binary thinking, too – and more about small shifts that will allow you to build confidence over time and find a new level of balance and comfort.
Aligning – When faced with a difficult or uncomfortable situation, avoidant behaviors will often result if we allow our emotions to determine our actions. What would it be like to allow our values to inform our response instead? When we know our values and allow them to drive our decisions, the desire to avoid will diminish and allow us to move forward confidently. In my coaching experience, a lack of alignment frequently leads to considerable stress, anxiety, confusion and feeling “stuck.”
All three of the above behaviors share one common element: conscious and deliberate action.
Avoidant behaviors can be active, like “reacting” and “retreating,” but not conscious and deliberate. Or they can be inactive, like “remaining” where we try to stay safe and comfortable by staying the same. On the other hand, Shifting, Approaching and Aligning all require a level of self-awareness and bias toward deliberate action.
Next time you recognize avoidant behaviors such as reacting, retreating or remaining, rise up to conscious and deliberate action instead.