Avoidance is a coping strategy that’s keeping you stuck

When something triggers anxiety or discomfort, removing yourself from it can bring immediate relief. Your body calms down, your mind quiets, and it probably feels like you’ve solved the problem.

But here’s the catch: avoidance only works in the short term. Over time, it quietly reinforces anxiety and stress, and shrinks your life in ways you might not even realize. 

Avoidance isn’t always obvious

When people think of avoidance, they usually imagine big, visible behaviours: refusing to fly, avoiding driving, or skipping social events entirely. But avoidance can be much more subtle.

It might look like choosing a seat closest to the exit “just in case.” Avoiding difficult conversations. Saying yes instead of setting boundaries. Procrastinating decisions. Even avoiding certain thoughts or emotions by distracting yourself constantly.

Because these behaviours don’t always feel overt or dramatic, many people don’t recognize them as avoidance. They believe they’re just being careful, prepared, or protecting their mental health. In reality, avoidance often spreads, starting with one situation and slowly expanding into a coping mechanism in many areas of your life.

How avoidance quietly takes over

One of the biggest problems with avoidance is that it tends to spread. You might start by avoiding airplanes, then buses, then cars. Or you avoid one uncomfortable conversation, then all conflict, then any situation that involves people you don’t know well.  

As avoidance grows, your sense of freedom shrinks. Opportunities disappear, not because you can’t handle them, but because you never give yourself the chance to learn that you can.

Avoidance also deprives you of experiencing a crucial component of your mental health: the opportunity for your mind and body to self-regulate. When you avoid discomfort, you never experience the reality that anxiety will come and go on its own, if you let it. You never learn that emotions are not dangerous, and that you CAN cope, even when you feel uncomfortable.

The cost of using avoidance 

Another hidden cost of avoidance is that it doesn’t just remove discomfort… it often removes joy. When people keep limiting their activities, situations, and experiences, they lose sources of enjoyment and connection. The less they engage externally, the more space there is for rumination, because there’s more time and mental space to overthink, analyze, and worry.

Relationships often suffer, too. Avoidant patterns can lead to distance, unspoken tension, or staying stuck in situations (jobs, relationships, dynamics) because change feels scary.

Ironically, avoidance also keeps what you fear at the forefront of your mind. You have to constantly scan and remind yourself what to stay away from. And that hypervigilence can be exhausting. 

Creating a skewed sense of danger

When avoidance becomes a habit, your perception of the world changes. Your sense of danger is no longer based on the actual situation, but on your worries about the situation. You view life through a biased lens, where it seems like there are potential threats everywhere.

In Metacognitive Therapy (MCT), avoidance is considered to be a mind-regulating strategy that often backfires. Instead of managing worry directly, people try to prevent worry from happening at all by avoiding situations that might trigger it. This approach is understandable, but it treats worry as uncontrollable and dangerous, instead of something temporary and manageable.

Why avoidance behaviour creates more stress

Many people believe that avoiding stress, anxiety, or emotional distress will protect them. But the research says the opposite: avoidance tends to make people more fragile over time.

When you constantly try to avoid stress, you become hyper-aware of anything that might be stressful. Avoiding stress becomes a full-time mental job, often creating more stress than the situation itself.

Stress, anxiety, and uncomfortable emotions naturally fluctuate throughout the day. Trying to get rid of them entirely adds constant pressure and keeps you self-focused, so you’re not fully engaged in your life.