Your Therapy guide

Exposure vs. Avoidance: Understanding Your Coping Responses


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Have you ever struggled to stop procrastinating or avoiding stressful situations? Dr. Yadegarfard breaks down the two most fundamental human responses to stress: Avoidance and Exposure. This episode explains how avoidance offers a tempting short-term fix but acts as a long-term trap. It grounds the discussion in the Fight, Flight, or Freeze mechanism, emphasizing that these automatic responses are neither good nor bad. Crucially, you'll learn that the goal of therapy is to gain conscious control to choose a flexible, healthy strategy—whether that's deliberate exposure or conscious avoidance (like using a grounding technique).

You'll learn:

  • How your body's natural Fight, Flight, or Freeze system leads to avoidance.
  • Why avoidance feels good in the short-term but makes anxiety worse in the long-term.
  • The principle of Exposure and how to use a gradual approach to face your fears.
  • Why the goal of therapy is flexible coping—sometimes that means exposure, and sometimes it means conscious avoidance.

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Your Therapy guideBy Dr Mohammadrasool Yadegarfard