Do Your Best to Avoid Avoiding

Another suggestion we have is for you to start working on reducing your avoidance of unwanted emotions, thoughts, and situations. As we discussed in chapter 1, too much avoidance can be a big problem when it comes to anxiety problems. In DBT and through the DBT skills you’ll learn in this book, you will learn several strategies to help you stop avoiding your emotions and thoughts. Indeed, David Barlow, a leading expert in the treatment of anxiety disorders, has said that one of the most important things people with anxiety problems can do is to learn to stop avoiding their emotions (Barlow, Allen, and Choate 2004). Now, you might be thinking, Yeah, right! You try to live with this tension and anxiety every day, and then tell me how much you’d like to stop avoiding it!

That would be perfectly understandable. As discussed in chapter 1, when you experience really uncomfortable feelings on a regular basis, it is natural to want to avoid them and try to do so. All things considered, and with some exceptions, most of us just don’t like to feel discomfort. And, anxiety and fear are uncomfortable.

For instance, if you are anxious in social situations or when speaking in public, you might avoid anxiety by staying away from people and avoiding all opportunities to talk in front of people. These strategies work in the short term, in that you probably feel calmer and less anxious when you are at home in your living room than when you’re around people. That’s why people keep avoiding situations that trigger anxiety; it feels better in the short term to do so. This is called negative reinforcement: you keep doing a behavior (staying at home), because it takes away something you don’t want (anxiety).

The problem is that avoidance just keeps the fear and anxiety alive. If you never go to a party, see friends, or talk in front of people, you never get the chance to learn that whatever you were afraid of (such as humiliation or embarrassment) usually doesn’t happen or isn’t all that bad when it does happen. So, the fear and anxiety are kept alive. If, instead, you stopped avoiding anxiety-­provoking situations, your brain would learn, over time, to stop pressing the panic-­anxiety-­fear button, provided that nothing really bad happened.

Another problem with avoidance is that there is often a rebound effect. This effect is seen when the very thoughts you try hardest to avoid are the same ones that seem to keep coming back. Well, in some research studies, people have found that when you try to suppress or avoid your thoughts, they tend to come back with a vengeance (Wegner, Erber, and Zanakos 1993). It’s not fair, we know, but it’s true.

Suppressing or avoiding thoughts and emotions is a lot like trying to prevent a flood of people from pushing through your front door into your living room. As long as you keep watch and push against the door, you might be able to hold them off for a while. But, if a boiling kettle in the kitchen distracts you, or if you try to brush your teeth at the same time, those people might just make it through that door. In a similar way, if you get interrupted and stop trying to avoid your thoughts or emotions, they can come flooding through.

The other option, then, would be to bolt the door shut, build a big brick wall, and board up all the windows and entryways in your house. The problem with that option, however, is that you may never get out of your own house. And, when it comes to thoughts and feelings, it’s impossible to completely block them out without blocking out most of your life.

In contrast, if you were to just let the people in through the door one by one and really look at who is coming in, you might learn to deal with them or at least to face them without quite as much fear. This would be an example of acceptance.