Have you found yourself being anxious about something, and deciding to avoid it? Then, over time, you find your anxiety about it is getting worse and worse?

And perhaps another anxiety is added to the original one: “What if I can’t avoid it?”

So, this is very common. And you might have heard that avoidance makes anxiety worse. But from what I read in popular blogs and see on most YouTube videos, it is not explained very well. I believe my explanation about why avoidance makes anxiety worse will resonate for you. And I’ll also provide some help about what you can do about avoidance anxiety.

What is the Avoidance Anxiety Cycle?

Understanding the avoidance anxiety cycle is very helpful. Seeing this as a cycle helps to identify what impact different thoughts and behaviors have on how you feel, which also helps you figure out where you can “intervene:” where you can make a change so you feel better!

Let's briefly walk through this cycle.

There is an event coming up that you know is going to make you anxious. All you need is the thought of that event to generate the anxiety response in your body. From the thought alone, your body pumps out adrenaline, your muscles get tight, your heart rate goes up, all because of the thought.

When you feel this way, you blame the feeling on the event. This is natural.

Instead of saying to yourself, “Oh, I feel this way because of how I'm thinking about the event,” you say to yourself, “I’m anxious because of this event.”

So if the event is causing the anxiety, what's the most logical thing to do?

Avoid it. Don't go.

Avoid the event.

This conclusion makes sense, right?

When you make that conclusion, you probably feel a sense of relief. “Phew. I just won’t go.”

So the feeling of relief reinforces the decision to avoid.

The problem is we end up avoiding things in a way that restricts our lives, and we know it.

The next time a similar event comes up, we probably have an added anxiety over “Do I go, do I not go? Do I do the thing? Do I not do the thing? How do I get out of it?“

We add a whole cycle of anxiety about whether we avoid or not on top of the original anxiety. Again, once the decision is made to avoid, “phew!”, we have an almost immediate relaxation response.

This relief trains your “old brain” that avoiding is the correct response. It also confirms for your “old brain” that the event is definitely  very scary. It is definitely something to avoid.

I sometimes think of our “old brain” as our “inner mammal.” We could call it our inner puppy. If you think about the level of understanding of a puppy, that's the level of understanding the “old brain” has. It is an automatic response part of your brain that gets trained very easily with a treat or a punishment in the moment.

It's not long-term thinking. This is not the part of our brain that can reason, “OK, I have to suffer through this because there is a long-term goal. In the long term, this will be better for me.”

This longer-term thinking might kick in with an understanding that you can’t keep avoiding this. But it is unlikely to overcome the automatic emotional response, particularly if that response has been frequently reinforced with the relief that comes from avoidance.  

Your long-term thinking is more likely to turn into self-criticism.  Beating yourself up will cause you different pain, but that inner puppy has relaxed.

Let me know in the comments below if this explains why avoidance makes anxiety worse or not.

The Problem With Avoidance Anxiety

So that cycle explains why avoidance will make the original anxiety worse and worse.

And eventually, the fear will actually turn into a fear of fear.

The fear of feeling fear can grow and grow to the point where you are living in an incredibly limited way. The fear can expand to anything even slightly similar to the original feared event. It expands to anything that might cause some anxiety.

The limitations on your life become painful in and of themselves. But because the anxiety is still tied to the event (and now it is tied to many different events), the avoidance can’t be overcome.

Understanding this cycle can help you begin to change that initial thinking.

“I am feeling anxiety because I have anxiety.”
“I am feeling anxious now because that is my habituated response to this event. It is not due to the event itself.”

This is called a reframe, or a re-attribution. Changing what you are attributing your anxiety to can help you directly address the cause. The cause is the anxiety, not the event. Therefore, the solution is to calm yourself physically.

The other thing that eventually will help lower avoidance anxiety is counter-intuitive. It is to increase your ability to feel anxious.

I know you probably don’t want to hear that. But one of the main things that is actually required to get over avoidance anxiety is to increase your ability to let yourself feel anxiety.

In my next blog, I will share more on how to overcome avoidance anxiety.

Let me know what you think about this explanation of why avoidance makes anxiety worse!