Avoidance increases anxiety over time. This can play out in many different ways, depending on what makes you anxious. CBT can help improve it.
Engaging in avoidance looks different, depending on the type of anxiety one has.To reduce anxiety, it is critical that one faces their fears, which can be done with exposure-based CBT.is by avoiding whatever it is that makes them anxious.
This avoidant behavior can present itself in many different ways: Someone who gets anxious in social situations may avoid eating lunch in the breakroom with the other employees. She is afraid she will say something stupid and her coworkers will judge her, so she eats her lunch in her car.Someone is afraid of flying because she is certain that she will be the unlucky one-in-a-million whose plane will have a mechanical issue and take a fiery nosedive into the ground. To prevent this tragedy, she always finds a way to drive instead of fly. Recently, she drove 12 hours to attend a work conference while all her coworkers flew.Someone with health anxiety is continuously anxious about having a serious or life-threatening disease. Due to his fear of having a disease, he avoids going to the doctor for regular physicals/check-ups. He is terrified of being told something is wrong, so he simply doesn't go.“What a relief, now I won’t have to die in a plane crash today.” The person with health anxiety feels relief at the idea of not having to face potential bad news about his health “I feel a lot of comfort knowing I won't be told bad news about my health by a doctor—because I am not going to the doctor.”Social situations, flying, and new symptoms will continue to get even more overwhelming as time goes on. The fear and anxiety over that thing only grows.The first step in this direction is to learn more about your own anxiety profile. Humans are unique and complex. One hundred anxious people could have one hundred different ways of experiencing anxiety. So, let’s find out more about what you avoid to prevent anxiety from happening.What situations or external triggers do I avoid to prevent or reduce anxiety? Think about situations, objects, people, or other external cues that you typically avoid because they make you feel anxious. Focus on what impacts your daily living the most.Try to identify thoughts, images, or impulses you often try not to think about because they make you feel anxious. Think about the unwanted thoughts that are most distressing for you.Think about any physical sensations, experiences, or symptoms that make you feel afraid when they take place. Do you either try to prevent them from happening, or if they start to happen, do you instantly try to control or bury them? Developing a more thorough understanding of what you avoid to not feel anxious is critical in tackling the problem of anxiety. Awareness paves the path for future steps of engaging with the things that bring about anxiety instead of avoiding them. Once we help you build awareness of whatever you are scared of, we can develop a plan to help you systematically face your fears. In exposure-based CBT, we help you build awareness of your anxiety patterns and then apply cognitive and behavioral strategies, little by little, to help you conquer your anxiety.Brittney Chesworth, Ph.D., LCSW , is a psychotherapist with a private practice that focuses exclusively on the treatment of anxiety disorders through cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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