What It is:
Emotion avoidance is a coping mechanism that involves escaping things you find emotionally uncomfortable or stressful. Emotional avoidance is not a disorder, though its overuse is associated with a variety of mental health concerns including anxiety and trauma.
Depending on your neurotype, personality, or learning history, you may attempt to escape your emotions in different ways. Sometimes you may try to escape physically (e.g., leaving a stressful situation), emotionally (e.g., numbing painful emotions with substances), or mentally (e.g., trying to focus your mind on something else or push emotions away). Within emotional avoidance, we often look for:
- Attempts to numb the emotion or suppress the intensity
- Withdrawing from important activities or situations because you wanted to avoid feeling “bad”
- Trying to distract yourself from the emotion or how you feel
- Looking for certain sensations or pleasure seeking in order to get through the emotion
- Trying to control your emotion or uncertainty through perfectionism, rumination, or compulsions
While most people use these coping strategies some of the time, others may become dependent on these strategies and become unable to tolerate difficult emotions or stress. When you become reliant on emotionally avoidant strategies, this often results in problems in day-to-day life, such as:
- Being unable to hold a job or complete schooling
- Social isolation or social dependence
- Experiencing intense anxiety or panic when asked to do things that are uncomfortable
- Perfectionism that gets in the way of completing tasks
- Impulsive or self-destructive behaviors (e.g., substance misuse, self-injury)
- Inability to complete required “adulting” tasks like making doctor’s appointments, opening and responding to mail or email, or navigating health insurance or taxes
- Inability to navigate social interactions such as asking for help, taking feedback, or interacting with others you find aversive in some way
Does This Sound Familiar?
Emotional avoidance can present very differently in different people. You may identify with one or more of the following:
- I keep myself busy so that I never have to think about my problems
- I avoid tasks, interactions, or situations that could make me uncomfortable
- I have things I use to “get through” stressful interactions- like substances, anxiety medications, or having a safe person with me
- I try to be perfect so that I never have to feel a negative emotion or cause a negative emotion in others
- I get angry if anyone tries to talk to me about my emotions
- I “shut down” or try to change the subject if anyone tries to talk to me about my emotions
- I spend a lot of time trying to “feel good” by using substances, thrill seeking, or impulsive behaviors
- I will do just about anything to avoid my emotions
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