Tag: avoidance

Avoidance Ace

I have a PhD in avoidance. I’m not sure I always realized that. I am not sure I always realized how much avoiding problems hurt me

I used to have noble delusions of why I wasn’t doing the something I was supposed to be doing. “I’m too busy with other things.” “I have to follow my to-do list.” “I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it.” “Eventually,” I would say.

Funny how I always seemed to have plenty of time for entertaining and frivolous pursuits. Shopping. TV. Magazines. Even housework. A preferable alternative say, to tackling taxes.

When I come across writing that expresses exactly what I am thinking or feeling – or more likely, what I need to hear, I am compelled to share it. As I have done before.

In part, I share it simply to put the good advice out there. The larger part of sharing it in my blog is to ensure I capture and remind myself of something I need to be regularly reminded of.

I have been on Marc and Angel Chernoff’s Hack Life mailing list for some time. They regularly publish helpful posts on how to live life well. They have written several books. Their output of consistently wise and relevant messages is impressive.

Below, Angel Chernoff clearly articulates why avoidance as a coping technique is dangerous. Avoidance and denial were endemic in my family of origin. Indeed, avoidance of problems regularly led to tragic outcomes in our family. Avoidance and denial led to tragedy in my life, too.

I made ill-advised life choices by ignoring facts. I shut my eyes really tight and convinced myself my problems would have disappeared by the time I opened them. I was such a child for such a long time.

Better to rip the bandaid off, they say. Face up to your problems. Take the bull by the horns. That said, it can take a long time to learn. It can take a long time to work through and resolve the fear that causes avoidance.

See if this post on developing healthy coping styles (and, ironically, avoiding unhealthy ones) resonates with you. It sure did with me.


The goal each and every day is to gradually grow stronger on the inside, so that less and less on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission.

Truth be told, how you cope with unexpected problems and frustrations can easily be the difference between living a good life and living an unhealthy one. If you choose unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance or denial, for example, you can quickly turn a tough situation into a tragic one. And sadly, this is a common mistake many people make.

When you find yourself facing a disheartening reality, your first reaction might be to deny the situation, or to avoid dealing with it altogether. But by doing so you’re inadvertently holding on even tighter to the pain that you wish to let go of — you’re, in effect, sealing it up inside you.

Let’s imagine someone close to you has grown ill, and supporting this person through his or her illness is incredibly painful. You might not want to deal with the pain, so you cope by avoiding it, by finding ways to numb yourself with alcohol and unhealthy eating. And consequently, you grow physically ill too while the pain continues to fester inside you.

Obviously that’s not good.

If you notice yourself doing something similar, it’s time to pause, admit to yourself that you’re coping by avoiding, and then shift your focus to a healthier coping mechanism, like using the quotes listed later in this post (several of which are excerpts from our books) to help you open your mind.

When you face struggles with an attitude of openness — open to the painful feelings and emotions you have — you find out that it’s not comfortable, but you can still be fine and you can still step forward. Openness means you don’t instantly decide that you know this is only going to be a horrible experience — it means you admit that you don’t really know what the next step will be like, and you’d like to understand the whole truth of the matter. It’s a learning stance, instead of one that assumes the worst.

https://www.marcandangel.com/2024/02/19/40-quotes-for-coping-with-things-you-cant-control/

Fuck Fear

Fear swims into my chest unbidden and swirls around my solar plexus in aching, incessant revolutions. Dead center in my body. Unbidden and heavy … triggered by what I assume will be bad news.

It is said that while we cannot control what others do or think or what happens around us, we can control our reactions. When fear hits, I immediately think all of that is pure malarkey.

My solar plexus fills up with fear without any conscious thought on my part. It is downright creepy.

I do not invite fear to fill up inside me overwhelming my senses and my reason. But fill up inside me it does. As surely as gas goes straight into a tank when the nozzle is depressed.

Unlike pumping gas, however, the fear doesn’t stop once the nozzle is released. It feels like a more automatic process.

I have learned some remedies for managing uncomfortable feelings of fear. Intellectually, I realize the highest and best road to take in the face of fear is simply facing it.

But that is usually my strategy of last resort. I play games in my head. I avoid picking up the phone or confronting the perpetrator. I avoid whatever will connect me to the bad news I fear. My stomach churns incessantly and the fear dances and coagulates in my body’s middle region.

As a stopgap measure, avoidance is actually not so bad a choice. It gives me time to collect myself. It gives me time to steel myself for the words I emphatically do not want to hear. In the poem Desiderata, there is a line I often refer back to: “Nurture strength of spirit to shield yourself in times of sudden misfortune.”

For me, getting to that end state is unreliable. When I am already feeling run down, maybe a little vulnerable, hungry, angry, lonely or tired … the well-known HALT acronym, I tend to be even more avoidant.

I have my fair share of memories where fear and terror swooped in when my defenses were at their very lowest ebb. I had no emotional or psychological defenses as no small child does. Yet my childhood world was full of fearful happenings and sudden wrenching losses.

Dad would frequently come home drunk and beat up my mother. I could do nothing but sit on the top step of the staircase outside my bedroom and shake from a combination of fear and cold in my thin cotton nightdress. Mom told me I once put myself between the two of them and pushed them apart when they were fighting. That was a pretty ballsy move for a four year old.

My beloved golden cocker spaniel Gus and my best buddy as a toddler was killed by a car when he bolted across the road in front of our house. He had been after a quicksilver squirrel. The squirrel got away.

Noone talked to me about how Gus died. As I recall, they didn’t even actually tell me he was dead. Probably one of those incipient “white lies” parents make up, presumably to “protect” their children. Maybe at the tender age of two or three years old, they saw no need to “traumatize” me with details I could not understand. Or so they thought.

I knew something must be wrong because Gus was nowhere to be found and didn’t come to my call. I also knew when I came upon a large red pool of liquid left in the front porch after Gus’s lifeless body had been taken away.

The sadness of that loss was compounded by the secrecy and hushed voices of adults around me who talk in that sotto voce way when something terrible has happened.

I know when I make that call today, I am going to hear: “Nothing more can be done. The builder can proceed and there is no legal impediment to prevent him from doing so.” I am steeling myself for the bad news.

By contrast, yesterday, my heart filled up with joy and hope for a few hours. An investigator came from the local authorities yesterday. I was temporarily cheered and encouraged by his very presence.

In the back of my mind, however, I knew my elation and optimism was sitting on flimsy evidence. Still, hope is a powerful analgesic.

An analgesic which is about to wear off.

Fuck.