Why we avoid things that make us uncomfortable

Avoidance is often understandable. When something makes us anxious, uncomfortable, ashamed, or emotionally overwhelmed, moving away from it can feel easier than facing it. We might put off a difficult conversation, delay a decision, avoid somewhere that has become associated with anxiety, or keep ourselves busy so there is less room to think about what is troubling us. In the moment, stepping away can bring a sense of relief.

That feeling of relief is an important part of why avoidance can become a pattern. When something feels emotionally threatening or difficult to tolerate, we may look for whatever will reduce that discomfort. If avoiding the situation makes us feel better, even temporarily, we are more likely to use the same response again when something similar happens. This can happen without any conscious decision to avoid things more generally.

In behavioural psychology, this process is known as negative reinforcement. The term can sound a little strange at first. In simple terms, it means a behaviour becomes more likely to happen again because it brings some relief from something unpleasant. In the case of avoidance, the unpleasant feeling goes down, and that immediate change can reinforce the behaviour that brought it about.

There are times when stepping away is useful. Taking a pause before responding to something difficult can give us enough space to think rather than react. We might decide to return to a conversation when we feel calmer, take some time before making an important decision, leave a situation that has become overwhelming, or put some distance between ourselves and a situation that is becoming too emotionally charged. There is a difference between giving yourself some space and continually finding reasons not to go back to something.

The difficulty can arise when stepping away becomes the usual way of dealing with discomfort, particularly when it starts to influence where we go, what we do, who we speak to or which problems we are willing to address. Taking a step back can make it easier to come back to something later. Repeatedly avoiding it can have the opposite effect, making it feel harder each time.

Over time, this can create a pattern that is difficult to recognise from the inside. The more often something is avoided, the less opportunity there may be to discover that it can be faced, tolerated or managed differently. What initially felt like a sensible way of reducing distress can gradually make the thing being avoided feel more difficult, while narrowing the range of choices that seem available.

Avoidance does not always look like avoidance

Sometimes it is fairly easy to see that we are avoiding something. An important decision may be repeatedly put off because making it feels overwhelming, or a particular place may be avoided because it has become associated with anxiety. Difficult conversations can also be postponed, often with the genuine intention of dealing with them once life feels less pressured.

Other forms are much less obvious. Keeping constantly busy, for example, can sometimes be a way of staying away from thoughts or feelings that are difficult to sit with. Work, exercise, social commitments, and other activities can all be positive and important parts of life, but they can also leave little opportunity to notice what is happening emotionally.

This can be difficult to recognise because the behaviour may look responsible or productive from the outside. Someone can be meeting their commitments, working hard and appearing to cope whilst also using busyness to avoid something they find difficult to acknowledge. Being busy gives them something else to focus on, which can make it easier not to think about what is going on underneath.

Avoidance can also involve withdrawing from other people. When someone feels ashamed, low or overwhelmed, even replying to a message or making plans can begin to feel like more than they can manage. Pulling away may reduce that pressure in the moment, but over time it can leave someone increasingly isolated and with fewer sources of support when difficult emotions arise.

There is also a quieter form of avoidance in repeatedly telling ourselves that we will deal with something later. “When things calm down” can gradually become a moving target, because there always seems to be a reason why now is not the right time. What begins as postponement can eventually become a way of keeping something difficult at a distance, without ever quite deciding not to face it.

When avoidance becomes part of emotional coping

Avoidance can become more complicated when we are using it to get away from how we feel, rather than from a particular situation. Anxiety may lead someone to steer clear of places, conversations, or circumstances that bring uncomfortable physical sensations or fearful thoughts. When someone is depressed, ordinary demands can feel much harder than they normally would, making withdrawal or postponement feel like an easier option.

Sometimes the avoidance is less obvious because it takes place in the mind rather than through what we do. Rumination, for example, can involve repeatedly going over the same problem or conversation without reaching a decision or taking action. It can feel as though we are trying to work something out, when in reality we are going over the same ground without getting any closer to what might need to happen next. 

The same principle can apply to substances. Alcohol or other drugs may provide temporary distance from anxiety or emotions that feel difficult to tolerate. Because the immediate effect can be a reduction in distress, using them in this way may begin to feel like an effective form of coping. As this pattern becomes established, however, relying on that relief can create difficulties of its own and make it harder to find other ways of dealing with difficult feelings.

These patterns do not automatically indicate a mental health condition or addiction. Avoidance exists on a spectrum, and people use it for many different reasons. What begins as an occasional way of getting through a difficult period can become more established when it repeatedly provides relief and there are few reasons to develop another response.

As the pattern becomes more familiar, facing the original source of discomfort can begin to feel harder. The person may have less experience of tolerating difficult emotions, resolving problems whilst they are still manageable, or discovering that an anticipated situation is not quite as overwhelming as it seemed. In that sense, avoidance can gradually reduce the range of responses available to them.

The narrowing effect of avoidance

One of the more important consequences of persistent avoidance is that it can gradually make life feel more restricted.

If avoiding something consistently brings relief, there may be little reason in the moment to approach it. Each time we avoid it, though, we also miss the chance to discover that the situation might be manageable, or that the feelings it brings up can eventually settle. 

This can create a cycle in which the anticipated discomfort becomes more significant over time. The situation may feel increasingly difficult precisely because it has not been faced for some time.

There can also be practical consequences to leaving things unresolved. A letter about an unpaid bill or debt might be left unopened in a drawer because dealing with it feels too difficult, only to become a much bigger problem later. By the time it is finally addressed, options that might once have been available may have become more limited, and something that could perhaps have been resolved through a conversation or payment arrangement may have progressed much further. By trying not to deal with the distress at the time, we can sometimes end up facing a problem that is much harder to untangle later.

The same process can occur with emotional experiences. If sadness, anger, shame, fear or anxiety are consistently pushed away, distracted from, or numbed with substances or behaviours, there may be fewer opportunities to understand those feelings or develop different ways of responding to them. For some people, this can become a pattern of repeatedly using alcohol or drugs to create distance from emotional pain. The relief may be temporary, but over time, the relief can become tied to the alcohol or drug itself, making it harder to imagine dealing with those feelings in another way. Avoiding the emotion can then become more familiar than allowing ourselves to experience it.

Avoidance can also spread beyond the thing that originally felt difficult. Avoidance can start with one particular situation and gradually spread into other parts of life. A person who puts off one difficult conversation may become increasingly reluctant to deal with conflict more generally. Someone who avoids one place because of anxiety may start planning their life around avoiding other places too.

As this happens, a person’s world can gradually become smaller. There may be fewer opportunities to discover that something uncomfortable can be managed, or that a situation anticipated with dread may not turn out as badly as expected. Avoidance can protect us from discomfort in the moment while also keeping us from experiences that might gradually build confidence and a greater sense of freedom.

There are times when stepping back from a situation is sensible, particularly when emotions are running high. Avoidance becomes more concerning when it is no longer something we choose, but something that increasingly decides what we can face.

What avoidance can look like

Some forms of avoidance can be surprisingly ordinary. You might recognise yourself in some of these behaviours:

• Putting off opening an email or letter because you already expect it to contain something difficult.
• Saying you will deal with a problem when life is less busy, only for the same problem to keep being postponed.
• Staying constantly occupied so that there is little opportunity to think about what has been troubling you.
• Avoiding a conversation because you are worried about how the other person might respond.
• Repeatedly going over a situation in your mind without deciding what to do about it.
• Turning down invitations or withdrawing from people when you feel anxious, low or emotionally exposed.
• Using alcohol, drugs, food, exercise or other behaviours to create some distance from difficult feelings.
• Continuing with a familiar situation that is making you unhappy because making a change feels more uncomfortable.

Understanding why it becomes established

Recognising a behaviour as avoidance does not necessarily tell us why it has developed. Simply trying to stop the behaviour may therefore miss what is making it feel necessary in the first place. Avoidance can serve different purposes, depending on what a person is experiencing and what they are trying to get some distance from.

A difficult conversation might feel threatening because of a fear of conflict or rejection. Staying busy may provide distance from grief that has not been processed. Alcohol may temporarily quieten anxiety that feels difficult to tolerate, while withdrawing from other people may offer some protection from feelings of shame or perceived judgement.

This also helps explain why an established pattern can be so difficult to change. The behaviour may have developed because, at some point, it provided a way of getting through something that felt hard to manage. Even when it is causing difficulties later on, that original function can still be present.

This is particularly important when avoidance has become closely connected to mental health difficulties or substance use. That can matter particularly when avoidance has become tied to a mental health difficulty or substance use. If the behaviour is simply taken away without addressing what it has been helping someone to cope with, they may be left facing the same distress without knowing how to manage it differently.

Psychological treatment can give people the space to understand these patterns and begin to work with what sits underneath them. Depending on the individual, this may involve becoming more able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, looking at patterns of thinking, gradually approaching situations that have been avoided, or finding different ways of regulating distress.

Moving beyond avoidance

The difficult thing about avoidance is that it often makes sense whilst we are doing it. The relief is real, and for a while it can feel easier to keep moving away from whatever hurts than to turn towards it. Most of us will put something off, step away from a difficult situation or look for distraction when we are under pressure. There is a difference, though, between occasionally stepping back when something feels difficult and finding that avoidance has become the main way of dealing with discomfort.

Seeing the pattern differently can also change how we think about behaviours that might otherwise be dismissed as procrastination, withdrawal or poor coping. There may be something more understandable underneath them, particularly when the behaviour has developed as a way of managing feelings that have become difficult to tolerate.

The aim is not simply to stop avoiding things. Understanding why a pattern has developed can make it easier to see what keeps it going and why changing it may feel difficult. With that understanding, it can become possible to pause before automatically moving away from whatever feels uncomfortable.

For some people, recognising an established pattern of avoidance can be a reason to seek support. That might involve exploring it in therapy or as part of a treatment programme. When difficulties have become persistent or are affecting several areas of life, a period of residential treatment can provide the time, structure and clinical support to look more closely at what is keeping the pattern in place and begin working on different ways of coping.

If you are concerned about a pattern of avoidance in yourself or someone close to you, our Admissions Team is available at sharon@ibizacalm.com.