Podcast 40: Avoiding Avoidance

Avoiding avoidance simply means trying to avoid things we perceive as scary or challenging.

As children, we learnt that this strategy was effective in keeping us safe by avoiding situations associated with pain and danger.  Unfortunately, as we grow, we can find ourselves applying the same logic in other scenarios such as things that make us uncomfortable or afraid.

Every time you withdraw from something you perceive as scary, you may get a short term feeling of relief, but this calm doesn't last.  This is common with phobias, a person starts by avoiding the initial thing that they fear.  This then develops and expands to other things because the brain starts to create different connections and associations which increases the number of things being avoided.

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