Avoidance. It's the #1 coping strategy for sufferers of anxiety disorder. Avoiding a situation that triggers intense anxiety can feel like dodging a bullet. Canceling plans with friends or turning down an offer to go out to a nightclub and instead spending a quiet night in your jammies (Alone, thank you) feels like pure heaven. The relief is practically palpable.
And it works, too. For awhile.
Hard Drive
The inexpressive Cost of Anxiety Avoidance
Avoidance isn't free though. You have to pay for it one way or another. Along with your anxiety, you're also avoiding the people, situations, and experiences that make a fulfilling life. Let's look at some common ways your anxiety avoidance causes self-sabotage:
Rejecting offers to go out with friends. Sure, it provides relief from awkward group anxiety, but think of all the fun you're missing out on. Not to mention that not maintaining friendships ultimately leads to not having any friends.
Turning down opportunities to travel. There's a big wide world out there. You've only seen one small angle of it. Many population think voyage essential to a rich, full life.
Watching Dvds at home instead of going to movies. I know it's tempting to wait to see that cool new flick until it's on the shelf at Blockbuster. After all, movies are expensive. And crowded. But there's something about taking in a show with other population that even the best home theater system can't duplicate. Movies are a unique group experience.
Calling in "sick" to work because of your anxiety. There's nothing wrong with taking an occasional reasoning condition day. We've all done it. When it becomes a habit though, it's what my old boss used to call a Clm - a "Career Limiting Move." continuing absenteeism can leave you stuck, demoted, or even fired.
Avoiding family gatherings. George Burns said that happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family. In someone else city. There's no doubt families can be annoying. Challenging. Sometimes they're impossible. But they are the ties that bind us to this world and tell us who we are. Not having family is a very lonely feeling.
Cycle of Fear: The Bad Habit of Habitual Avoidance
Getting too comfortable avoiding uncomfortable situations is self-sabotage because it makes your anxiety worse. Science of mind refers to this as negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is any behavior that's rewarded because it removes an unwanted stimulus or feeling.
Let's say you have driving anxiety. It's very common. Now let's say you're uncomfortable driving on freeways. You begin to avoid freeways, which makes you more uncomfortable driving on freeways, which leads to more avoidance.
You may ultimately find your ache about freeways has turned into panic. Just the opinion of them may now fill you with terror. You've gone from merely being uncomfortable on freeways to being terrified, at which point you'll probably stop driving on them completely.
With anxiety, avoiding an uncomfortable situation is a form of negative reinforcement. When you allow fear to make you back out, you're causing the self-sabotage of your own goals. The "reward" is that you don't have to contact the fear anymore. But when you avoid anxious situations, you're more likely to avoid them in the future.
I've used driving anxiety as an example here, but continuing avoidance of any anxiety-provoking situation will ultimately make your anxiety disorder worse.
3 Ways to Heal the Causes of Your Self-Sabotage
First, let's clearly see what self-sabotage means. I like this definition from The Adventurous Writer:
"Basically, self-sabotage is a combination of thoughts, feelings, and actions that stop you from achieving your goals or succeeding in life. It's you creating obstacles that work against your own self-interests."
In the context of anxiety disorder, self-sabotage is the increasing avoidance of anxiety-producing situations. Achieving your goals is very hard when can't engage in the activities required to reach your goals in the first place.
So, you need to learn skills that allow you to face uncomfortable situations without running away. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You must learn to do the thing you think you cannot do."
Get help with expert therapy. Therapy, especially Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Cbt), is very efficient for treating anxiety disorders. Many experts think Cbt the broad most victorious medicine for anxiety. The downside is therapy can be expensive. If you can't afford expert help, think one of the many excellent self-help books about Cbt.
Practice the art of mindfulness. Self-sabotaging anxiety is regularly anticipatory. In other words, it's your fear about what Might happen and not fear of what legitimately Is happening. Fear of the unknown hereafter is always worse than any ache you're experiencing now. Being "mindful" means studying to bring your concentration back to the gift moment when you notice you're getting caught up in anticipatory anxiety. Anxiety disorder is mostly about fear of the future; what's happening now is often tolerable, even pleasant. Mindfulness is about staying focused on your moment-by-moment experience.
Learn self-hypnosis techniques. Hypnosis has gotten a bad rap, mostly due to stage hypnosis. We've all seen the image of the man waving a watch and chanting, "You are getting veeeeeeeery sleepy." Real hypnotherapy bears about as much relation to this as Science of mind does to alchemy. Hypnosis is a way to bypass your conscious, reasoning mind and speak directly to your subconscious. Your subconscious is where most of your feelings and attitudes about the world reside, particularly fear-based reactions. Hypnosis induces a state of calm freedom in which the unconscious mind becomes open to new suggestions about reality.
Choose to Believe change is Possible
As the Buddha said, "What we think, we become." I would add that "how we feel depends on how we act." If you have anxiety disorder, it's likely that avoidance is the main cause of your self-sabotaging behavior.
What you need are tools that will let you "hang in there" in scary situations long sufficient to break the negative reinforcement cycle of avoiding your fear. Therapy, mindfulness, and hypnosis are mighty tools that will help you do this.
Change becomes potential when we learn to not let fear dictate our actions. I believe that with all my heart.
Is Avoidance Part of Your Anxiety Disorder? - 3 Ways to Heal inexpressive Causes of Self-Sabotage
