Avoidance
Because ignoring it always works.
Avoidance is one of the most common—and most misunderstood—coping strategies we use to navigate discomfort. It’s not just procrastination or denial. It’s a protective mechanism, often rooted in fear, trauma, or overwhelm. And while it can offer short-term relief, it often comes at the cost of long-term growth, connection, and healing.
In psychological terms, avoidance refers to any behavior we use to escape, delay, or minimize contact with uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, memories, or situations. It’s a central feature of anxiety, trauma responses, and many forms of maladaptive coping. It’s also what I experience every time I think about mourning the loss of my mother. My therapist has actually told me to schedule time to mourn. I think I’ll put it off a little longer.
Avoidance can be:
Cognitive: distracting ourselves, denying reality, or rationalizing
Behavioral: skipping events, ghosting people, staying busy to avoid reflection or thinking (or mourning)
Emotional: numbing out with substances, food, media, or overwork
Maladaptive Avoidance Patterns
When avoidance becomes chronic, it can lead to increased anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, disordered eating, relationship strain, financial problems, and so many more issues. The more we avoid, the scarier things feel. They become outsized and unwieldy. The monsters under the bed. We don’t communicate authentically and we lose sight of our values.
Avoidance often feels like self-protection, but it can quietly reinforce the belief that we’re incapable of handling discomfort.
Take a look at that list of maladaptive avoidance patterns. I want to point out just how problematic avoidance is—each of those can be mutual indicators for avoidance. For example, avoidance can cause anxiety, and anxiety can cause avoidance. Not to be left out, avoidance can cause anxiety and an eating disorder and/or substance use disorder, and an eating disorder and/or substance use disorder can cause anxiety and avoidance. You get my drift.
They’re all ingredients that can cause us to think, behave, and feel in certain ways...but, take heart, none of this is new. There’s plenty we know about how all of it fits together. These recipes have been tried and reviewed, and avoidance is a pretty good ingredient to skip altogether. It can make things taste funny. Plus, it’s overpriced.
How Avoidance Shows Up in Our Lives
Avoidance isn’t always obvious. It can sound like:
“I’m just too busy to deal with that right now.”
“I’ll do it when I feel more ready.”
“It’s not that important anyway.”
“I’m having some ‘me time.’”
It can look like:
Not opening bills or emails
Avoiding medical appointments
Staying in relationships or jobs that feel safe but stagnant
Overplanning without executing
Using humor or intellectualization (Reasonable Mind) to deflect vulnerability
Avoidance vs. Procrastination: What’s the Difference?
Avoidance and procrastination often look similar on the surface, but they’re driven by different forces. Procrastination is usually about putting off tasks because they feel tedious or overwhelming, while avoidance is about steering clear of discomfort—emotional, psychological, or relational. Understanding this distinction matters because the strategies for addressing each are different.
I know it helps me to see the difference because I can put them into different buckets in my thinking. Putting off getting my dad’s passport is procrastination because I’m annoyed and don’t want to figure out just how we’ll do his new picture. I could say, I suppose, that I’m avoiding it because of some resentment over having to do it, but I don’t actually think that’s it. I think it’s just that the nuts-and-bolts of it tire me, so I keep putting it off.
Avoidance is a psychological defense mechanism where we steer clear of thoughts, feelings, memories, or situations that feel threatening, overwhelming, or uncomfortable. It’s often unconscious. Examples:
Not going to a doctor’s appointment because you’re afraid of bad news
Avoiding a difficult conversation with a loved one
Distracting yourself from grief or trauma with work, substances, or sleep
Procrastination, on the other hand, is delaying or postponing tasks or decisions, often despite knowing there may be negative consequences. It’s usually a conscious decision. Sure, procrastination can stem from avoidance, but also from poor time management, lack of motivation, perfectionism, or executive functioning challenges. Examples:
Putting off writing a report until the last minute
Delaying cleaning or other household tasks because they’re boring or tedious
Waiting to apply for a job (or reapplying for my dad’s passport!) because the process feels overwhelming
Personal Reflection: Avoidance in Addiction
When I was in the throes of alcoholism, avoidance operated on two levels.
First, I wanted to avoid getting sober—perhaps partly subconsciously. I did that by avoiding everything that showed me the harm I was doing to myself and others. I didn’t answer phone calls. I didn’t open bills. I didn’t go to the doctor. I didn’t even go out with friends if I had already started drinking that day… or if they believed my lie that I’d quit.
To address this level of avoidance, I had to address my alcoholism—which I did. And as I began to recover, I used the building mastery skill from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Each time I opened a piece of mail or answered a phone call, things didn’t necessarily get better—but they didn’t necessarily get worse. And they certainly didn’t get worse in the long run.
The second level of avoidance was deeper: whatever I was avoiding by clinging to the substance use disorder itself, along with its cohorts—my eating disorder and anxiety. This is why sobriety is just the beginning of recovery. The work continues when we face what addiction has helped us avoid.
Reframing Avoidance: Deferred Maintenance
Not all avoidance is maladaptive. Sometimes, what looks like avoidance is actually what I like to call deferred maintenance—a conscious or unconscious decision to pause, postpone, or set aside something that requires energy we don’t currently have. Yes, I’m borrowing it from the facilities and budget management practice of postponing necessary repairs, upgrades, or upkeep on physical assets, usually due to budget constraints, lack of resources, or competing priorities.
Think of it like skipping a car tune-up during a stressful month. You know it needs attention, but you’re prioritizing other things. Eventually, you’ll get to it—when you have the time, money, or bandwidth. As long as it won’t cause your car to break down, you should be fine.
Deferred maintenance can be:
Letting emails pile up during a period of grief
Putting off a difficult conversation until you feel emotionally grounded
Delaying a creative project while recovering from burnout
This framing invites self-compassion. It says: “I’m not avoiding this. I’m doing what I can with what I have.”
The key is intentionality. Are you deferring with awareness and a plan to return? Or are you avoiding indefinitely because the discomfort feels too big? It’s like those posts we see online—the gee, I just did the thing I’ve been avoiding for a year and a half…and it only took me fifteen minutes to do it. Sometimes that’s deferred maintenance.
Avoidance isn’t a moral failing—it’s a nervous system strategy. But when we understand it, we can begin to choose differently. We can move from protection to connection, from fear to freedom.
Coping Skill Spotlight: Scheduled Worry Time
One evidence-based coping skill used in anxiety treatment is setting aside time to worry—literally scheduling a 15–30-minute block each day to let yourself think through your fears, write them down, or problem-solve. Outside of that time, you gently redirect your attention when worries arise, reminding yourself: “I’ll get to this during worry time.”
This technique:
Reduces rumination
Builds emotional boundaries
Helps you feel more in control
Prevents worry from hijacking your whole day
It’s a perfect example of deferred maintenance. You’re not suppressing your anxiety—you’re postponing it until you’re in a better position to examine it. You’re paying attention to both your emotional needs and your capacity.
When we consciously choose to separate emotional or cognitive tasks into different “containers” or time blocks, we’re practicing intentional compartmentalization. This is different from dissociation or denial—it’s a skillful way to manage overwhelm.
Examples include:
Focusing on work during the day and journaling about grief at night
Putting aside relationship stress to be present with your kids
Scheduling time to process trauma with a therapist rather than trying to do it alone in the middle of a busy week
Intentional compartmentalization says: “I can hold this, but not all at once.” It’s a way to respect both your emotions and your limits.
What We Can Do About It
Avoidance often feels protective, but over time it can shrink our world and reinforce the belief that we can’t handle discomfort. The good news is that avoidance isn’t permanent—it’s a pattern we can change. Addressing it starts with awareness: noticing when we’re dodging tasks, emotions, or conversations and asking what we’re afraid will happen if we face them. From there, we can use practical strategies—like breaking things into smaller steps, leaning on values for direction, and building skills to tolerate distress—to move toward what matters instead of away from what feels hard.
Here are some ways to address avoidance:
Name it: Awareness is the first step. Notice when you’re avoiding and what you’re trying to escape.
Get curious: Ask yourself, “What am I afraid will happen if I face this?”
Break it down: Start with small, manageable steps toward the avoided task or feeling. Yes, I’m back to my favorite skill, building mastery.
Use values as a compass: What matters more than comfort right now? (This is probably the one that makes me most angry because I know it’s what will get me out of my avoidance...which I can cling to like a life preserver at times.)
Practice distress tolerance: Learn to sit with discomfort without reacting.
Seek support: Therapy, coaching, or peer support can help you build accountability and resilience.
Support for Addressing Avoidance
Avoidance isn’t just a minor habit—it’s a powerful force that can shape the way we live, work, and relate to others. When we avoid discomfort, we often trade short-term relief for long-term consequences: missed opportunities, stalled growth, and deeper emotional pain. In recovery, avoidance can keep us stuck in cycles of addiction or prevent us from facing the underlying issues that fuel those patterns. That’s why most therapeutic modalities make addressing avoidance a priority. Each offers a different lens and set of tools for helping us move from escape to engagement, from fear to freedom.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT addresses avoidance by targeting the thoughts that keep us stuck. If I believe, “If I open that bill, everything will fall apart,” CBT helps me challenge that belief and test it against reality. Exposure exercises are central here—gradually facing what we fear so our nervous system learns that discomfort isn’t catastrophic. Over time, this breaks the cycle of avoidance and reinforces approach behaviors.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT views avoidance as “experiential avoidance”—our attempt to control or escape internal experiences like anxiety or shame. Instead of trying to eliminate these feelings, ACT teaches us to make space for them while moving toward what matters. Through mindfulness and values-based action, ACT helps us say, “This discomfort can come along for the ride, but I’m still going to do what matters to me.”
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
DBT gives us tools to tolerate distress and regulate emotions so we don’t feel the need to escape, because dialectics are all about carrying things forward even when they seem like they can’t exist at the same time. Skills like distress tolerance and building mastery help us stay present and take small steps forward. When I was early in recovery, building mastery was key: Each time I answered a phone call or opened a piece of mail, I proved to myself that I could handle discomfort—and that things didn’t necessarily get worse.
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
MI approaches avoidance with curiosity rather than confrontation. It assumes ambivalence is normal and helps us explore both sides: what we gain by avoiding and what we lose. Through reflective listening and gentle questions, MI helps us uncover our own reasons for change, making the shift from avoidance to action feel less like pressure and more like choice.
SMART Recovery
SMART Recovery treats avoidance as a learned coping strategy that can be replaced with rational thinking and intentional action. Tools like cost-benefit analysis and ABC worksheets help us weigh the trade-offs of avoidance and challenge the beliefs that keep us stuck. SMART also emphasizes values-based planning and lifestyle balance, motivating us to move toward what matters rather than away from what feels hard.
Twelve-Step Facilitation (TSF)
TSF counters avoidance through accountability and connection. It starts with acceptance—acknowledging that avoidance and denial are part of the disease process—and then uses structured steps like attending meetings, finding a sponsor, and completing recovery tasks to break isolation and decrease continued avoidance. Personal inventory and amends directly confront the things we tend to avoid, like guilt and shame, in a way that promotes healing rather than punishment.
Worksheet: Exploring Avoidance
Understanding avoidance is one thing—working with it is another. This worksheet is designed to help you notice where avoidance shows up in your life, distinguish it from procrastination, and explore compassionate strategies like deferred maintenance and scheduled worry time. Use these prompts to reflect honestly, identify patterns, and pinpoint areas where you might want support. If you uncover something that feels too big to tackle alone, consider bringing it to someone you trust—a friend, therapist, sponsor, or support group. Recovery and growth happen in connection, not isolation.