Avoiding Anxiety – Is That Why You’re Anxious?
By: Kendra Bittner, LPC
Anxiety is a survival skill. It tells us there is danger near, kicks on our fight-or-flight, and gets us ready for action. It is important to have some level of anxiety, especially when a tiger is running at you! Or more present-day when you have a big presentation or are anticipating a big transition in life. Having anxiety is a good thing when it’s appropriate for our survival instincts to kick in. However, avoiding anxiety usually leads us to create more anxiety.
When you’re in a dangerous situation you need your acute stress response to kick in. This is your body going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
Fight – facing any perceived threat aggressively
Flight – running away from threat
Freeze – being unable to move or act against a threat
Fawn – immediately acting to try to please or avoid any conflict
This Is Important for Survival
This response would be valid if you were walking out to your car from work and you saw an aggressive tiger in the parking lot. Your anxiety would skyrocket, triggering your stress response. Rightfully so.
Sometimes you can have a similar response to situations such as a non-aggressive kitten. Maybe you have had a poor experience with a kitten in the past. Now your brain associates all kittens as a threat. When you walk out to your car and see this kitten you may go into panic. Or you will avoid going to your car completely until the kitten is gone.
This survival response is important for us, but when everything in life becomes a tiger and you are having intense emotional and physical reactions in situations where you’re not actually in danger you get exhausted.
Anyone who has experienced long periods of anxiety and panic wants relief and wants it fast. This can lead to avoiding anxiety at any cost, which eases these symptoms temporarily but ends up causing more anxiety long term.
Avoiding Anxiety Creates More Avoidance
That kitten you are afraid of (insert your anxious fear here) could cause you to avoid going anywhere where there could be the possibility of a kitten being present. Initially, there is relief and anxiety is more managed. The next time another situation comes up where a kitten could be present, this anxiety is going to be right back where it was, and usually worse. Your anxiety could start kicking up while listening to your friend talk about their new kitten. The more you avoid the worse your anxiety gets in the long run.
Avoiding anxiety makes sense. It might feel okay in the short run but you are creating patterns in your brain to keep up the avoidance in the long run. You won’t be able to outrun your kitten forever, getting help to manage these fears is important. Exposing yourself to situations you fear at a reasonable pace and learning to tolerate anxiety can be the most beneficial for targeting your anxiety and having lasting effects.
Exposures are one way in therapy you can start to move through your anxiety. It should be done at a pace that you can manage without full panic and in a supportive environment. Having the right therapist across from you can soothe you and helps you build up internal skills. Those skills will help you face your fears and slowly teach your brain that you can handle more than you realize and that not every situation will end with the kitten attacking.