Three Types of Emotional Avoidance

Emotions help us successfully adapt to our environment. It took millions of years of evolution for them to develop, and each emotion has its own reasons and functions. We often try to erase the part of the emotional spectrum that makes us uncomfortable, but this only makes things worse, trapping us in a cycle of negative experiences. Instead of the happiness we crave, we’re more likely to end up stuck in a loop of distress. Ultimately, any suppression has consequences, and no matter how hard we try to avoid certain emotions, our neurochemical systems will deliver those signals anyway. To achieve emotional balance and become the best version of ourselves, we have to experience sadness, anxiety, anger, fear, guilt, and a long list of other unpleasant emotional states that help us grow and move forward (Jesus Larrinaga, 2024).

What Emotions Drive Us To Do

As you may recall, there are three systems of emotional responses, and one of them is responsible for our behavior. In response to what’s happening, the body tries to adapt as efficiently as possible to changing conditions, and depending on the situation, emotions push us toward certain actions.

Our behavior is determined by our emotional state. For example, guilt motivates us to make up for harm we’ve caused; fear prompts us to avoid or escape what scared us; when we’re sad, our body asks us to slow down and reflect.

At the start of the book, we learned that emotions serve three main functions: the adaptive function helps us survive and adjust to external conditions; the motivational function drives us to act for the sake of adaptation; and the social function allows us to communicate with others. All three are especially evident in our behavioral response system. However, as mentioned, our body responds differently depending on the emotion we’re experiencing.

Generally, when behavior fulfills its biological function, the intensity of the emotion decreases. For example, if we manage to escape from a terrifying predator, our fear disappears as soon as the threat is gone.

However, as humanity has evolved, our society has changed dramatically, and often emotions arise from misinterpreting reality. Worse, we sometimes fail to recognize false alarms that are actually manageable, and we fall into a vicious cycle of emotional avoidance.

Emotional Avoidance

In general, avoiding emotions always leads to a worsening of our condition. Emotions are the brain’s way of telling us we need to act in a certain way. Yes, sometimes our internal algorithms aren’t well adapted to our current environment, and we experience emotions that aren’t useful, but trying to avoid them is illogical—it only makes them stronger. The more we try not to feel sad, anxious, or angry, the more these emotions overwhelm us, and the more often and intensely we experience them.

Most models explaining affective disorders identify avoidance as a barrier to resolving problems quickly. For example, phobias persist because a person tries to avoid anxiety and fear, doing everything possible to stay away from situations that might trigger those feelings, or escaping as soon as they arise. Psychotherapy for such disorders uses the opposite approach: exposure therapy confronts patients with their fears so that they stop feeling anxious in situations or around stimuli that aren’t actually dangerous. Through exposure, the brain learns there’s nothing to fear, and after several sessions, negative reactions fade.

So keep in mind: continued attempts to avoid feelings and emotions will only make the discomfort associated with certain situations more persistent and intense. We need to change how we respond to emotions. Ultimately, treat your emotional state as information your body is giving you, and act as wisely as possible, taking both emotions and reason into account.

For example, let’s say I have a long-standing fear of expressing my opinion in public. Every time I get the chance, my body reacts with fear. In these situations, I have more catastrophic thoughts and start to worry that if I speak up, my loved ones will turn away from me. Physically, I feel tightness in my chest, a racing heart, and muscle tension. The discomfort makes me avoid public speaking at all costs. That’s probably exactly what my body wants: for me to stay silent and avoid unpleasant sensations. But the problem is, one day I’ll have to speak up, and the fear will return, trapping me in a never-ending cycle of anxiety and avoidance.

By giving in to my phobia, I not only make public speaking more uncomfortable, but I also miss out on many opportunities. Over time, I’ll generalize my reactions, first refusing to speak up around strangers, and eventually staying silent in most situations.

Types of Avoidant Behavior

We can avoid emotions in different ways. You already know that emotional reactions occur on three levels: cognitive, physiological, and behavioral. The types of avoidant behavior we display are linked to these same levels.

Cognitive Avoidance

From the chapter on cognitive reactions, you learned that trying to push thoughts out of your mind only makes them come back stronger, more vivid, and more persistent. These are usually emotionally charged thoughts, and common sense tells us to distance ourselves if they make us uncomfortable. But as we’ve seen, this tactic is ineffective in the long run, so trying not to think about certain things just makes those thoughts stick around all day. If you remember Wegner’s white bear experiment, you know why cognitive avoidance doesn’t work.

Imagine I have a job interview in a few weeks. It’s a big deal for me—I’ve worked hard to get here. As the date approaches, I’ll be flooded with thoughts about the interview. If, instead of seeing them as a sign of my concern for the future and a cue to prepare, I try to avoid thinking about it, I’ll trap myself in a cycle of endless anxiety. This won’t help at all—it’ll just make things harder and hurt my performance.

Physiological Avoidance

This type of avoidance is linked to physiological reactions. Strong arousal usually means discomfort, and we tend to avoid it. From an evolutionary perspective, this made sense: 150,000 years ago, such arousal could mean real danger. Reducing it meant survival.

But today, we can quickly manage physiological reactions with chemicals. Certain medications can help us calm down at first, but eventually, they trap us in a vicious cycle of emotional avoidance.

Here’s a good example: I’ve always been afraid to talk to attractive women. Imagine that every time I get the chance, I have a drink first. At first, alcohol might help me calm my nerves, but over time, my social skills won’t develop, and I’ll become dependent on stimulants, unable to approach someone I like without them.

This also applies to some psychotropic drugs, especially tranquilizers, which complicate the treatment of mental disorders, particularly anxiety. Sometimes, a patient feels instant relief after taking a sedative in a stressful situation. But the medication doesn’t solve the problem—it just reinforces the emotional reaction, making it more intense without the drug. If the person succeeds with the help of medication, they’ll likely credit the pill, not themselves. This creates a serious problem in treating panic disorder with agoraphobia, as patients get used to always carrying a tranquilizer just in case.

We teach our brain that emotions like anxiety or fear are dangerous and harmful, so, paradoxically, we start to fear fear itself. If we’re used to avoiding emotions with substances, the pill becomes our only resource, leading to dependence and making normal life impossible without sedatives.

Behavioral Avoidance

This is the most obvious type of avoidance, as it’s visible to others. Here, a person avoids situations or stimuli that cause unpleasant or unwanted feelings. When it comes to adaptive emotions, avoiding the triggers helps us adjust, but with emotions that have low adaptive value, this behavior makes life harder.

For example, avoiding heights or other dangerous places is adaptive. Fear keeps us safe, away from cliffs and unguarded ledges. In this case, no emotional management is needed—fear serves its purpose.

Problems arise when avoidance prevents us from adapting. Suppose we’re very afraid or uncomfortable talking to strangers. If we resist it at all costs, our social life will suffer. Sometimes, the problem gets so bad that we can’t make friends or find love, or our relationships are unsatisfying. In these cases, we need to use all the emotion regulation strategies discussed here to gradually overcome our fears and improve our social life.

Usually, if we manage to cope effectively with unpleasant emotions during exposure to triggering situations or stimuli, our emotional response will gradually weaken in similar circumstances.

For example, people with panic disorder and agoraphobia are most afraid of panic attacks. This fear generalizes, spreading to more and more situations, which they then avoid. The most common are driving, using elevators, public transportation, and being in crowds. Once anxiety attacks are under control, therapy should focus on overcoming emotions in situations the patient has long avoided. Of course, you can’t rush—it’s important to rank the triggers and start with those that cause the least fear. In therapy, the person gradually moves from one situation to another until they stop hiding from triggers out of fear of a panic attack.

Safety Behaviors

Safety behaviors are a set of small rituals people use, which are also a form of avoidance. Rituals may reduce emotions in the short term but reinforce them in the long run.

This could be something subtle—for example, always carrying a sedative. Just having the medication on hand gives a sense of courage, but it’s a superstition: tranquilizers don’t work unless you take them. Someone might go years without a panic attack but still never leave home without their pills. The real trouble comes the one day they need them and don’t have them—this will definitely cause anxiety.

The problem with safety behaviors is that they create a false sense of control. We lose the chance to face the problem naturally and realize we can handle it ourselves. Using a safety mechanism, we credit external factors for our success, not our own abilities. If we have panic disorder with agoraphobia and manage to use public transport with pills in our pocket, we’ll likely think we succeeded only because we could take them if needed.

In early treatment, allowing safety behaviors can be helpful, but it’s recommended to gradually phase them out. Research shows that rituals can partially reduce the impact of triggers, but this keeps the problem going for a long time.

How Do We Respond to Emotions?

As you know from previous chapters, as we gain experience, our brain changes, allowing us to learn new ways to respond to different stimuli. But the habit of using avoidance to cope with emotions pulls us into a vicious cycle.

Every time we avoid something, the neural connections involved get stronger, and the process becomes automatic. Sometimes, emotions pull us into such a strong whirlpool that we don’t even notice the cognitive reactions associated with them. The link can be so strong that the behavior follows almost automatically when the trigger appears.

The good news is that, despite years of reinforcing certain reactions to certain stimuli, we can change them. The techniques I’ve shown you throughout this book are designed for exactly that. Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Armed with this idea, we can start acting differently if we want to change our emotional reactions.

My childhood was mostly happy. But looking back, I realize I faced rejection more than once, which made me very shy. I was a bit overweight, and my baby teeth, due to extra-sensitive enamel, had many defects. It didn’t harm my health, since my teeth were replaced in a few years, but it didn’t look great. Other kids teased me, and their mockery made me socially withdrawn. But that wasn’t the worst part. Gradually, I compensated for my insecurity by trying to please others, which eventually helped me make many friends. At the same time, I became convinced I had to be perfect and successful in every area of life, or people wouldn’t accept me.

In a previous chapter, I described how I discovered this false belief and the method I used to do it (the downward arrow technique). My emotional balance became dependent on others’ opinions—or rather, what I thought they thought of me. This habit made me insecure and always ready to change my position to please others. If I hadn’t re-examined my behavior, I’d never have developed new beliefs and would have kept living someone else’s life instead of my own.

But this distorted view didn’t form overnight. I gradually learned that pleasing others made me less anxious about being rejected, and over time, my actions became almost automatic. For years, I lived this way without realizing what was happening in my mind. I built up experience and false beliefs that were supposed to help me adapt to my environment. When we get used to acting the same way in similar emotional states, our interpretation of reality changes too.

At the time, this behavior helped me socialize. But even 20 years later, after losing weight and flashing a healthy, straight smile (thanks to my parents for the orthodontist), I still acted like that same kid. I was still afraid of not fitting in, of not being good enough.

Imagine: an adult with his own business, already published a book—and still afraid of not being accepted! Fortunately, I realized this in time, managed to change my core beliefs, and finally started living my own life, not caring about others’ opinions.

Deciding to take the bull by the horns and learn to act based on my emotional state and my own reasoning can initially increase emotional discomfort. After all, we’ve spent a long time avoiding it, so our body will rebel. But gradually, as you stop fearing your emotions and start managing them, they’ll become much milder, and you’ll feel more comfortable, allowing you to see your life from a new perspective. But before taking decisive action, we need to learn to recognize emotional avoidance and safety behaviors in ourselves. That’s what we’ll discuss in the next section.

Assessing Emotional Avoidance

To track situations where we avoid emotions, we need to develop emotional intelligence. This means listening to ourselves and understanding what our feelings are telling us. We all avoid certain emotional states and resist certain feelings, but this only ensures those emotions stick around as our constant companions.

To counteract triggers that provoke emotions we’d rather avoid, it’s best to keep a journal. Throughout this book, I’ve suggested exercises where you record your emotions, thoughts, and physiological reactions. These notes can serve as a great guide for assessing emotional avoidance.

We’ll assign each type of avoidant behavior a score from 0 to 100, depending on the level of discomfort the associated emotion causes. This will give us a range of values from least to most intense. This sequence will show us exactly where to start to tackle difficult situations.

The most important thing is to build emotional resilience, so that as we overcome problems, we grow and develop every day. The first step is to choose an optimal number of situations or triggers that cause us unpleasant feelings.

You can make a table like this:

Then, rate the emotions associated with each situation from 0 to 100.

Finally, arrange the triggers and situations in order of emotional intensity, from least to most. Don’t worry if the real order isn’t perfectly clear. This is just to get a general idea of how to approach your emotions. Start working on the problems, and as you go, you can rearrange, review, and re-evaluate the true intensity of your emotions.