Anxiety and Avoidance: How Can I Tell If I'm Avoiding? | Ep 299

This is episode 299 of the Anxious Truth podcast or on the Anxious Truth YouTube channel If you are new here , the Anxious Truth podcast , or on the Anxious Truth YouTube channel If you are new here . The Anxious Truth is the podcast and YouTube channel that talks about all things anxiety , anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery .

So , however way you end up here today , if it's your first time , welcome . I'm glad you're here . I hope you find what you find here today to be useful or applicable in your anxiety and anxiety recovery journey . Of course , if you're a returning viewer or listener , welcome back .

Glad that you're here , giving me your time and attention and supporting the work that I do in whatever way you do that . Thank you very much . I am Drew Lynn Salata . I am creator and host of the Anxious Truth .

I am also a therapist practicing under supervision in the state of New York in the US of A specializing in the treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders . I'm a three-time author on this topic anxiety , anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery .

I am a psychoeducator , an advocate , social media guy and a former sufferer of things like panic disorder , agoraphobia , ocd and depression for many years of my life on and off , thankfully doing much better , now fully recovered . But I don't only know what I talk about here . From books and learning and my graduate degree .

I actually live these experiences and I hope that gives me a little bit of an extra edge in trying to help you understand and ultimately overcome these problems . So today we're going to talk about avoidance , which is one of the core concepts in anxiety disorders , chronic anxiety and anxiety recovery .

Specifically , we're going to address some of the confusion around avoidance , because sometimes it can be a little bit sneaky and a little bit tricky . But before we get into that , just a quick reminder that the Anxious Truth is more than just this podcast episode .

There are way more resources and ways to support my work , get more information , go into greater depth on my website at theanxioustruthcom .

So if especially if you are new here today , I would urge you to go check out that website Again it's the anxious truthcom and avail yourself of all the goodies , most of which are free , and even the things that do carry a cost are relatively affordable At least I'm told that they are , and I appreciate that feedback from the community .

So check out my website at the anxious truthcom . Check out all the other podcast episodes and social media content , the workshops , the books . There's stuff there that I think you're going to find helpful . So let's get into the topic of avoidance .

If we start from the premise that avoiding triggers , or trying to stop or instantly prevent uncomfortable internal experiences like feeling anxious or experiencing panic attacks , is a bad idea , then we wind up in a situation where we might be wondering sometimes if or when we are avoiding .

Now , if this is a new concept for you , you're gonna wanna pop back and listen to some of the older podcast episodes in the catalog to sort of get the lay of the land . I will specifically point you at episodes 266 , 284 , and 287 , all of which are less than a year old , and do explain a bit more why avoidance is a bad idea .

I will put those in the video description or the podcast description , depending on how you're consuming this content . So I'm often asked by anxious people that are interested in doing recovery air quotes right If they are accidentally or secretly avoiding anxiety without knowing that they are doing that .

They know that they have to break their avoidance habits , but sometimes they're not really sure whether or not they are actually avoiding . And so they ask me and frankly it's a really excellent question the really short answer to is this avoidance is well , sometimes you just don't know , because you can't be totally clear on how you feel and what you're thinking .

That's normal . We don't always have perfect self-knowledge or self-awareness because we are imperfect humans , which means that sometimes you just won't be able to tell if you're tapping out because you're tired or simply not interested or something , or if you're afraid of how you feel , which is where anxiety avoidance comes in .

I mean , it might be a combination of multiple reasons when you skip activities or go into retreat mode or exit a particular situation or context . The first rule when it comes to identifying avoidance is to stop demanding that you do this perfectly all the time . Nobody does it perfectly .

Everybody winds up in gray areas where they're just unsure about avoidance , at least sometimes . Now , if you don't like that , because you don't like being unsure , or maybe not recovering properly or perfectly today makes you uncomfortable . Well , congratulations , you've just unlocked a new exposure target .

If you will , can you work with that discomfort today , rather than trying over and over to eliminate it by looking for perfect clarity on avoidance or infallible step-by-step , perfect black and white instructions that you can follow ? Well , think about that .

If it's hard for you to recognize that you might not know the answer to your avoidance question , that's something for you to work on . Another thing that I want to mention here is that there are , in fact , some things in life that we do want to avoid .

When we are being abused or harmed or manipulated or injured or attacked , or we are in actual , real , imminent danger , well , please avoid if possible . That's my official advice . As a mental health professional . There is no part of recovery or exposure I cannot stress enough that involves intentionally putting oneself in the path of actual harm or injury .

If your partner is abusive , for instance and if that's true , I'm very sorry to hear that you are not avoiding by trying to leave that relationship If your job or your co-workers or your boss is causing you physical or mental harm , looking for a new job is not avoidance , of course . If there's a hurricane or a tornado bearing down on your house .

Well , evacuation is not avoidance . It's really important to clarify that , because sometimes people think things take things a little too literally because they're really very concerned with doing recovery perfectly , and then they think they should never avoid anything . But that's not true . So I needed to add that clarification here .

In this context , we're talking about trying to avoid internal experiences , that is , feelings , emotions , thoughts and bodily sensations that we insist we must never experience because they are too much in some way . These are the experiences we're talking about here .

That being said , it's also not required for anyone to continually run at full speed toward discomfort during every waking moment to build character or sort of accelerate your recovery . That doesn't work Ultimately . If you try that , it'll backfire on you . So ask yourself this Did you work on breaking your avoidance habits in some way today ? Cool .

Avoidance happens in some way today , cool . Then also make sure that you take a little time to take care of yourself physically , mentally , emotionally , spiritually or however other way . You need to tend to yourself . That's okay . In fact , you kind of got to do that .

So resting after a long day is not avoidance , unless , of course , you've been resting air quotes all day already because you feel like you can't take the risk of being triggered . On some days you won't actually be able to clearly identify if you're resting because you won't be able to clearly identify if you've been avoiding all day or not . Again , that's okay .

Just do the best you can and see if you can use this confusion or uncertainty to work on tolerating the discomfort that that creates . There are lessons everywhere in recovery if we just stop and look for it . So how can you tell if you are avoiding or not ?

Well , here are five basic facts about anxiety and avoidance that you can kind of lean on as you go through this process . The first one is that intent is what really determines avoidance . Are you making choices specifically to try to not get triggered ? Are you doing things with the specific intent of managing or preventing or stopping your anxiety ?

Are you focusing all the time on coping skills that are intended to calm you down or short circuit your anxiety or panic ? Are you planning your days based on how you feel so that you don't wind up doing too much and winding up too anxious ? Again , air quotes if you're listening and not watching , you know .

Are you following all of the wellness instructions and anxiety tips and tricks and hacks you can find on the Internet because they're designed to stop panic or people tell you they're good for anxiety . Intention is the number one indicator of anxious avoidance in the context of chronic or disordered states of anxiety .

What are your intentions when you try to make your choices ? Are you trying to prevent the way you feel or instantly stop bad feelings ? That's what you're looking for . The number two thing you got to look at is that motivation can help determine avoidance .

If your motivation is to not feel bad or to feel good which , by the way , are totally understandable and not crimes against recovery then you might want to rethink that a little bit . I mean , it's perfectly okay to want to feel good . Everybody wants to feel good . I want you to want to feel good .

It's not really okay to engineer your entire life in ways that you ultimately kind of hate , just to try to feel good or not feel bad . Be mindful of wants versus actions . Want to avoid and retreat ? Well , no problem , but do you then avoid or retreat ? That's an issue you'd want to pay attention to .

You can actually be motivated in two directions at the same time comfort and progress . The thing here is which action path will you choose based on which of those two motivations .

So the number three thing that I want to point out that you can sort of lean on when you're trying to suss out like that suss out that's sort of like my Australian and British slang coming through . Number three principle that you can sort of rely on here is that emotions can drive avoidance .

If fear is the dominant emotion in any situation , then you are either in harm's way for real , legitimately , like the tornado or the abusive partner and you should listen to that . We would sort of call that regular or externally generated anxiety or you are afraid of how you feel and might be making avoidant choices to get around those feelings .

Sometimes it's hard to tell which emotions we are experiencing . That's okay . Again , human beings do not always have perfect clarity and self-awareness . Do the best you can to see if you can identify what you're feeling when you're trying to make activity and life choices . Fear-based choices in the absence of actual threat move us away from recovery .

Values-based choices , acting based on what's actually important to you in life , move us closer to recovery . Now for more on values and recovery . I would urge you to see episode 59 of the Disordered podcast , which is the second podcast I do with my friend Josh Fletcher . There's more on values in episode 59 of Disordered , which you can find at disorderedfm .

The next thing I want to point out is that a sense of urgency often signals possible avoidance . Sometimes in life we are faced with situations that are , in fact , urgent and worthy of immediate action to find solutions or safety . How we feel is not usually one of those situations .

Are your thoughts , bodily sensations and emotions feeling urgent , like you are in an emergency situation because how you feel inside ? Are you feeling frantic or out of control , trying to manage or fix how you feel ? Well , this is a sign that you might be primed for avoidance or escape habits . Be mindful of that .

And the last thing that I want to mention , when it comes to sort of important facts and guidelines about anxious avoidance in the case of chronic and distorted anxiety recovery , is that there is more than one kind of avoidance . There is a difference between macro avoidance and micro avoidance . What does that mean ?

Macro avoidance is the avoidance that most anxious people can sort of instantly recognize . We know when we're doing that . You get invited for lunch with your friends but you say no because you're feeling too anxious today or you're afraid that you might panic .

During lunch you quit your job because driving that far to get to the job makes you anxious or triggers panic attacks . You refuse to stay home alone for even a few minutes because you don't want to feel too anxious or heaven forbid panic .

While you're alone you might spend hours immersed in behavioral or mental compulsion loops that your OCD or your GAD tells you are good ideas , so you can avoid the bad feelings and scary thoughts that you might have . Now , special note to my GAD people , generalized anxiety disorder .

You know the excessive planning , problem solving , analyzing , worrying , ruminating and overthinking that comes with GAD . That's the avoidance . You do that to avoid feeling a certain way , even when doing that often makes you wind up feeling the very way you're trying to avoid feeling . It's okay to stop engaging in active worry or rumination .

You're not avoiding your problems if you do that and for more on that you can check out the past episodes that I've done here on the Anxious Truth , on generalized anxiety disorder , and we also did one of those on the Disorder Podcast . So check that out .

Now , now that we've seen you know sort of macro avoidances that we can all recognize and really kind of clearly call out . Let's talk about micro avoidance . Micro avoidance , on the other hand , is often hidden and it can be really sneaky .

So examples of micro avoidance might be sticking to very rigid rules about sleep or nutrition or self-care so that you can try to minimize the odds that you'll feel things that you are afraid to feel . Getting glued to routines and tightly managed schedules to try to manage your anxiety or prevent it from ever happening can be a sneaky form of micro avoidance .

Only choosing to shower or go to bed or leave the house when specific conditions are met can signal micro avoidances . When specific conditions are met can signal micro avoidances .

Only consuming mental health , personal growth or wellness content in books or videos or podcasts or on social media platforms can be a form of micro avoidance , because , after all , I can't read a fun book because I might risk missing out on a magic anxiety tip . Right , I must be managing my anxiety at all times . Right ?

And when you are trying to obey those very rigid rules to make sure that you feel okay and you're recovering perfectly , you can wind up in a bunch of little micro avoidances that you don't even really recognize but can be really impactful .

The life of an anxious person , and by that I mean a person who's struggling with chronic or distorted states of anxiety is usually very heavily sprinkled with microavoidances that have become habits or rituals and are often not even noticed by that person . I know I had a ton of them . I didn't even know I was doing them .

Start working on breaking your avoidance habit because you recognize that it's causing you problems in your recovery . See if you could start to look at your daily rituals and routines and sort of the way you live day by day to find micro avoidances .

This is a perfectly acceptable place to start and in some cases it's even the preferred way to start because working on micro avoidances leads us to maybe easier to conceptualize or understand exposure work . That is often a better way to start the whole . Face what you fear . Experiment .

If you're agoraphobic , for instance , you're not going to start recovery by driving across the US from coast to coast on a 3,000 mile cannibal run . Targeting microavoidances is a better way to start . That can be a great and perfectly acceptable and useful first step . So remember that the opposite of avoidance is tolerance and navigation .

When we avoid , we learn that we are incapable of allowing our own feelings , thoughts and bodily sensations . But when we tolerate and navigate through those things , we learn that we've been wrong about that all along and that feeling things is really safe . Even the things we feel are quite uncomfortable , scary , disturbing and difficult to feel at times .

So in the end , if you're reading or listening to this because you're trying to break the avoidance cycle , good for you . You get credit for that Good step . But how do you know for sure if you are avoiding in any given circumstance ? Well , often you can't , and that's okay .

But see if you can use the framework that I've sort of presented you here to help you make your choices . But if you wind up making a choice that seems perfectly legit on Tuesday but then by Wednesday you could clearly see was avoidance , so what ? Every experience gives us an opportunity to learn and grow . If you blew it and you avoided , guess what ?

You didn't actually blow it . You're learning to improve your avoidance detection skills . That's a thing . So take what you can from the experience and do the best you can going forward . There's literally nothing wrong with that at all . So that is your like 17 minutes here on the anxious truth , episode 299 , on whether or not you're avoiding or not .

When you can't tell , there's no black and white answer to that , but you can try and use some of these guidelines to look at what you're doing , what you're considering , what choices you're going to make or not make , and that might help you clarify things a little bit .

But again , if you don't really know , if this doesn't help you get clarity , do the best you can make , the best decision you can in the moment trying to , you know , incorporate the principles of recovery as you know them .

And if it turns out that you start to look back and say , oh boy , I've really been avoiding all along , okay , take those lessons and modify it . That's totally okay . Anyway , I hope you have found episode 299 helpful in some way . That's a really big topic .

It's almost impossible in a one-to-many context like a podcast or a YouTube channel or a social media feed , for me to literally answer your specific question about your avoidance habits , because I don't know you , I don't know what you're doing , I can't see it . That's a question that you would tend to bring into therapy .

I can answer that question with much more clarity and with greater precision with my therapy clients than I can here , but at least we can look at general concepts and how you might apply them . Try to clear things up a little bit .

So I'm going to ask you , as always , for a little favor if you enjoyed this podcast episode or this video , or you enjoy the work in general and you find a want to find an easy way to support it .

If you're listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify or any podcast platform where you can rate and review this podcast well , I don't know , maybe leave a five-star rating if you think I warrant it and if you really dig it , take a moment and write a nice review to say why you like the podcast , because that does help me out and it helps other people find the

anxious truth , and then other people get the help that they might need , which is why I started doing this crazy thing . To begin with . And , of course , if you're watching on YouTube , welcome YouTube .

If you want to leave a comment on the video , I promise sometimes now , as I'm finishing up my graduate program and working with clients , it takes me a little longer to comment , to answer comments on YouTube , but I promise at least once or twice a month I will get in to do that .

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And you might consider subscribing to the channel if you didn't already liking the video , and maybe hitting that notification bell in your YouTube app so that you know when , in fact , I upload new content , because the YouTube algorithm just sucks and it's not going to show you my stuff half the time .

But this is the deal that we have , so we have to work , work at it as best we can and thank you however way you choose to support this work or spread the word . If you are so inclined to do that , I appreciate it . So that's episode 299 of the Anxious Truth in the books .

We'll be back again in two weeks , because we publish the Anxious Truth every two weeks with another topic .

I'm not really sure what it will be , but I will certainly be here to do a topic of some kind , and I'll remind you , as always , to wrap this up , that no matter how small the steps are that you take today toward the things that matter to you and away from your anxious , magnified , distorted , irrational fear , those steps count .

If you're at the very beginning of this and you cannot even imagine how you might disobey your fear and do the things that you really want to do , even though you're too afraid to do them . Any tiny step you can take in that direction matters . It helps you get started . We learn lessons in every experience , no matter how small

they may be . So try not to get discouraged . Take those little steps day by day . Little by little , they do add up . Every recovered person in the world , including me and I am bold enough to call myself a fully recovered person for many , many years did that by taking little steps again and again and again and letting them add up .

I wish there was a magic wand that I could wave and give you 10 hacks that instantly stop your anxiety forever . That's nonsense , and be wary of people that promise you that , because they will leave you feeling discouraged or more broken when you can't seem to make it work that way . Just take the little steps as best you can every day , let them add up .

Nice to yourself , be patient while you do it and you can get there . Anyway , I hope you found a little encouragement in that . Thank you for stopping by to listen and or watch this week , and I will see you in episode 302 weeks . Take care .