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The cycle of avoidance

4 minute read

Avoidance is the most natural response to fear there is. If a situation makes you anxious, staying away from it brings immediate relief. The problem is what that relief teaches you.

The cycle

Picture it as a loop. Anxiety rises as a feared situation approaches. You avoid it, or you escape from it early. Anxiety drops, fast. That drop feels like proof that avoiding was the right call, so the next time the situation comes up, avoiding is even more tempting. Meanwhile, the belief that the situation was dangerous never gets tested, because you were never there long enough to find out.

Learning theorists described this decades ago. Mowrer's two-factor theory proposed that fear is learned by association and then kept alive by avoidance, because avoidance is rewarded every time by relief. Later work refined the details, but the core observation has held up: avoidance is self-reinforcing, and it protects the fear from correction.

Four costs of avoiding

The Centre for Clinical Interventions describes four consequences.

1. You never test the prediction. If you think you will make a fool of yourself and you never go, you cannot discover whether that is true. The fear stays exactly as strong as it was. 2. You miss the good parts. Avoided situations are not only sources of threat. They are also where friendships, work, and ordinary pleasures happen. 3. Self-criticism grows. Many people use their own avoidance as another reason to think badly of themselves, which feeds the anxiety. 4. It spreads. Avoidance rarely stays put. A fear of one meeting becomes a fear of meetings, then of the office, then of the commute.

Subtle avoidance

Avoidance is not only staying home. It includes leaving early, going quiet, keeping your eyes on your phone, sitting near the exit, drinking beforehand, and running through a script in your head instead of listening. These are sometimes called safety behaviors, and they have their own article. They let you be physically present while avoiding the actual test.

The cycle of progress

The same loop runs in reverse. Approach the situation and anxiety rises in the short term. Stay long enough to see what happens and you get information: the prediction did or did not come true, and you coped or you did not. Over time, expectations become more realistic, confidence in your own coping grows, and anxiety falls. You did not force it down. There was less to be afraid of than you thought.

References

• Mowrer, O. H. (1960). Learning theory and behavior. John Wiley & Sons. doi.org/10.1037/10802-000
• Rachman, S. (1976). The passing of the two-stage theory of fear and avoidance: Fresh possibilities. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 14(2), 125–131. doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(76)90066-890066-8)
• Salkovskis, P. M. (1991). The importance of behaviour in the maintenance of anxiety and panic: A cognitive account. Behavioural Psychotherapy, 19(1), 6–19. doi.org/10.1017/S0141347300011472
• Krypotos, A.-M., Effting, M., Kindt, M., & Beckers, T. (2015). Avoidance learning: A review of theoretical models and recent developments. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9, Article 189. doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00189
• Arnaudova, I., Kindt, M., Fanselow, M., & Beckers, T. (2017). Pathways towards the proliferation of avoidance in anxiety and implications for treatment. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 96, 3–13. doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.04.004

Helpful links

• Centre for Clinical Interventions: Stepping out of Social Anxiety (Module 3 covers avoidance)
• Centre for Clinical Interventions: When Panic Attacks
• Get Self Help: Anxiety

Educational content, not medical advice or a substitute for professional care. Ready to try it? Open the online worksheet or get the app.