Quick Tips Series (18/30): Avoidance
Your journey to solving your problems with brain science!
Each time you choose to avoid discomfort, such as an awkward conversation, work on a project, a decision, a workout - your brain gets a feeling of relief.
But because you follow us and read our content, you already know that feelings are the worst advisors.
Each time you avoid something, you also train your brain to overthink next time, locking yourself in a cycle of procrastination, indecisiveness and chasing momentary relief at the cost of long-term satisfaction and success.
Avoidance only feels like relief in the moment, you dodge the stressful task, and your body relaxes. But that quick comfort comes at a cost. Each time you avoid, your brain learns that “skipping it makes me feel better.”
Over time, this wires in a loop: stress rises, avoidance kicks in, relief follows. In science, we call this negative reinforcement.
Feels good? Perhaps. But it also ruins your life.
The major problem is that the original issue doesn’t go away. Instead, the worry grows, and your brain repeatedly misses the chance to learn that things aren’t as dangerous in reality as they feel.
You momentarily took the distress away, and your brain “rewarded” the behaviour, keeping you stuck. This is called maladaptive avoidance.
The email still needs answering, the decision still needs to be taken, the project still needs to be completed, the fear does not go away, and all those things continue to pile up…
And the comes the consequences: guilt, stress and regret - just to name a few. Those feelings fuel even more overthinking and make you feel inadequate and not enough. And the longer you avoid, the worse it all gets.
Quick fix?
Avoidance blocks what is called corrective learning - action driven evidence for you and your brain that things are safe, manageable and possibly satisfying to complete.
Neuroscience shows that avoidance circuits are easy to fix.
All you need to do is to provide your brain, repeatedly, with action-based evidence of psychological safety: respond to the email, have the conversation, make tiny progress on the work project…
Each time you do it you teach your brain a new lesson: “I can handle this!”. Overtime, this will weaken your learned avoidance pathways.
The key element? Action before thinking.
By facing small challenges you’d normally avoid, you give your brain new evidence of safety, and slowly rewire the patterns.
References
Avoidance learning: a review of theoretical models and recent developments https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00189
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—Chances, Challenges, and Clinical Implications of Avoidance Research in Psychosomatic Medicine https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.841734
Surviving threats: neural circuit and computational implications of a new taxonomy of defensive behaviour DOI:10.1038/nrn.2018.22