How to Break the Avoidance-Anxiety Cycle

“The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering.”

— Paulo Coelho

Anxiety and avoidance often go hand in hand. When you experience anxiety, you may feel a lot of fear, worry, or heightened body sensations about specific situations and the possible outcomes of being in those situations. To cope with these overwhelming feelings, you might resort to avoidance behaviors. These behaviors involve (you guessed it!) avoiding situations, places, or people that trigger, or activate, your anxiety. As time goes on, you may find more and more people, places, and things that activate worry, fear, or a jittery nervous system.

Here's how anxiety and avoidance are connected:

1. Fear Reinforcement: When you avoid situations that bring on anxiety, you can get short-term relief, and this reprieve reinforces your avoidance behavior, making it more likely and familiar to you. So, you may then start avoiding similar situations more often. However, this avoidance prevents you from learning that the situation might not have been as difficult, dangerous, or scary as you believed. That you can survive going to an event alone, that you can get on an airplane. in the long run, turning away from and avoiding strengthens anxiety because you cannot learn to cope with the situation and the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors leading up to the situation.

2. Narrowing of Activities: Avoidance can lead to a narrowing of your life. You might stop participating in activities you used to enjoy or avoid social interactions, ultimately impacting your quality of life. When you become more isolated from the world, you can become depressed, unhappy, and—yes, more anxious.

3. Increased Sensitivity: Avoidance can increase and expand your anxiety triggers. The more you avoid, the more sensitive and fearful you become to those situations, making it even more challenging to confront them in the future. Your brain and nervous system are primed to believe future events are threatening.

4. Cycle of Anxiety: Anxiety and avoidance are a vicious feedback loop. Anxiety leads to avoidance, which provides relief but reinforces the anxiety, leading to more avoidance. Breaking this cycle often requires confronting the feared situations with the help of therapy and gradual exposure. So, what can you do to confront, re-frame, and build your toolkit? Read on…

1. Mindfulness and Deep Breathing: Sometimes, we can only breathe. Breathing exercises can match the intensity of what you are experiencing. For a quick fix, try straw breath: inhale deeply through your nose, exhale with sound, pursing your lips, and imagine you are blowing out through a straw. For a more complicated breathing activity that may stop your spiraling thoughts, try 4-7-8 breaths: inhale for 4, hold your breath for 7, and exhale for 8. Remain focused on the present moment without judgment (mindfulness) via taking action by engaging your mind and body in a breathing activity.

2. Physical Activity: Do as best you can regular physical activity. Exercise can boost your mood and reduce anxiety. It doesn’t have to be intense – even a short walk can make a difference. But sometimes, doing a complicated and/or intense physical activity can engage you more directly in the here-and-now.

3. Healthy Lifestyle: I’m sure you’ve heard it before—maintain a balanced diet, sleep well, and limit caffeine and alcohol intake. All these factors can significantly impact your anxiety levels. Changing your habits takes time. Celebrate the stepping stones! It’s an opportunity to engage in some authentic positive self-talk. ‘Nice work, Amanda. You are worth the effort’.

   Finding what works for you might take some time and experimentation. Contact me to learn more about how I can support you to transform and break apart the avoidance-anxiety cycle.

Grinning With A Clenched Jaw: How To Get Through the Holidays Unscathed

This time of year can shake up our usual routines and can be more challenging than other times of year. For some, it’s a really ‘bad’ season. For others, it’s pretty bad and a little good—for some about even on the bad and good, and for others, more good than bad.

If you are in any way activated, unbalanced or dysregulated during the holiday season, this post may help you navigate your challenges with more ease. Disclaimer: I do come from a Christmas background, lightly sprinkled with Christianity and Tolstoy from my formative years. My default communication-of-ideas can’t help but be somewhat based in past experiences and current observations within my framework as a therapist. And yet, perhaps some of these themes and tips may transcend culture and identity—being helpful for those who struggle during these months. Consider:

What are your expectations during this season? What you want to get from the holidays? Are these expectations realistic, do they involve how you want other people to behave? What if you didn’t have expectations (easier said than done)?

After a challenging experience (going to a gathering, party, being alone) when things didn’t work out as your hoped (or expected), think about the experience as a partial success rather than a complete failure. This can make it easier to see what you can learn from it, maintaining feeling rational (rather than emotionally dysregulated).

This time of year is temporary—there is an end date to the celebrations, the rituals, the family dynamics, the buying and spending, the indulging…

Practice good old health habits. Rest, sleep, drink water, eat some balanced meals, move your body, avoid the over-indulging, track how substances impact your mind, body and spirit. Talk to a person who helps you feel regulated, more calm.

Notice your early warning signals that your emotions are getting bigger. Emotions can get amplified this time of year—sadness, worry, isolation, loneliness, memories of painful holiday experiences. How can you self-soothe? This may be going inward— taking time on your own to go for a walk, listen to music, journal, breathe. Or it could be helpful to engage outward, have a simple positive interaction with a stranger or neighbor, go to a class, be with others without engaging—going to the library, the grocery store, a craft fair. Acknowledging that you are having an emotion is also key. Once an emotion starts, it needs to run its course. Oftentimes our thinking blocks or intesifies an emotion, leading to an emotion getting stuck, which then leads to some mental messes.

Old dynamics can take front and center—if you suspect or know you will be around a person, group or place that is triggering, or that can regress you to acting in a way that feels younger, Ask yourself— how can I minimize my vulnerabilities before engaging with the person, place or thing? What needs to be accomplished, what really matters, what are your priorities? Planning ahead will also minimize last minute stress. Can you plan ahead, creating a concrete strategy that involves setting boundaries (leaving early, vowing to not ‘take the bait’, excusing yourself to the bathroom, etc…)

Consider reflecting on all the positive things in your life, how far you’ve come in a year, what is going well. Be intentional with this, turning away from ruminating about what is wrong or hard.

Create your own traditions, memories, legacy and/or ritual. What do you want from these months? Connect with what feels good, energizing, empowering.

Taming the Anger Cycle, One Step at a Time

There are times when I hear it from my daughter and husband: You Are So Angry. This isn’t a compliment or neutral observation—it’s a call to stop doing what I’m doing. It usually doesn’t help because I’ve already lost my ability to reason and think rationally, so a rational observation isn’t enough to bring me back. And coming back to an emotionally regulated state takes time, and is my responsibility to enact.

As I come down from the anger, the sadness often is right there—alongside guilt, shame and worry that I’ve done irreparable harm. So I’m hit with a double arrow; first the actual anger spew, then the fallout from improper displacement.

The cycle sucks, it happens, and I keep working on becoming more skilled. You know the secret, right? Most therapists have some sort of history of being wounded, traumatized, depressed, anxious, etc.. I’m one of them. And angry behavior is my biggest teacher, my biggest indicator that I’m engaging in a survival-based pattern that no longer helps my present-day. The cycle is my biggest opportunity to change and re-do my ways.

I want to share some ideas and practices that may help those of you who get what I’m saying—who are often at a loss around how to cope with the anger cycle.

• Anger is an energy. It can be telling us varying things: something needs to change, action needs to be taken, a boundary needs to be set, an unmet need or want is surfacing, an injustice is happening, and/or our fight-flight response is kicking in.

• It’s damn near impossible to control emotions, especially anger, once it gets rolling. The trick is to either use tools to stop the anger escalating, or doing things to bring the anger or rage back down as efficiently as possible.

• When we’re in full-blown rage or anger, certain things will not help. Deep breaths won’t do shit-neither will counting to 10,20,30, or other mindfulness activities. You need a stronger intervention to jolt your nervous system down a notch:

  • Chew or suck ice. Put an ice pack between your eyebrows, at the back of your neck, or anywhere else that zaps you into feeling what is presently happening.

  • Fill up a sink with cold water, take a big inhale, hold your breath and put your face in the water, hold for 10-30 seconds.

  • Go outside, pull up weeds if there are any, rake, shovel, etc..

  • Get some paper, rip up the paper or ball up the paper.

  • If you can, leave the environment that has you escalating. This could be going into a different room, outside, out for a walk or run. DO NOT DRIVE.

  • Some people find it helpful to decrease stimuli—put in earplugs, noise cancelling headphones, go into a dark room, put a cold washcloth over your eyes while lying down.

• If you do things that do not escalate your anger level, you will eventually start to feel less angry and your brain will eventually come back ‘online’. Then practice more distraction—read something you can focus on, watch something you can track, move your body, get under some covers, allow the transition towards emotionally regulated to happen.

Often, it can be really helpful to work on anger with a therapist, counselor or in a specialized group. Contact me to learn more about working with your anger.

Think unresolved childhood stuff might be holding you back? See if these common ‘adult child’ characteristics fit your story.

It’s not just the addict or the main dysfunctional person who needs help to become whole or well again—the effects ripple out to all who are invested or a part of that person’s life.

So it makes sense that if you grew up in a home where there was active addiction, lots of dysfunction, or stress, you probably were impacted by it. Especially if you were a kid when it was happening. You probably had to find your own way to live amidst unpredictability. Kids can be resilient adapters, yet often it comes at a cost.

The symptoms of untreated trauma, unresolved stuff, unhelpful habits, patterns you default to, often become more and more troublesome as you age; as you attempt to start or maintain relationships, forge your own path, or start your own family. Old feelings and sensations get stirred up, you may know you don’t want to repeat the past, yet are at a loss around how to break the cycles.

If you are interested in learning more about how childhood trauma or distressing events can show up in adults, I’ve listed below some common characteristics people develop in response to growing up around addiction, dysfunction, and/or the aftereffects of experiencing trauma.

Ideas compiled from my own work with clients, from the work of Dr. Tian Dayton, Ph.D., Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D., and from ACOA 12-step literature.

• Difficulty with Self-Regulation Big emotional or behavioral swings, going from 0-10 quickly; feeling overwhelmed and flooded with big emotion, to then shutting down or numbing out. Hard to know how to stay in the middle—often because no one modeled it for you growing up.

• Hypervigilance/Negativity Bias Scanning people, places, and things for signs of danger or threat in order to protect yourself—this reflexive ‘being on guard’ or ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ can lead to anxiety, worry, and more relationship conflict. Someone or something might not actually be dangerous—you may overreact to a situation or person due to a perceived tone, expression, or action. As a kid, you may have had to be on guard at home, checking to see what mood a parent was in, to then decide how you needed to be in order to feel safe, get your needs met, or avoid.

• Easily Triggered, Reactive You may be more sensitive to stress, especially stress within a relationship. Therefore, you may overreact to conflicts that could be dealt with calmly and pragmatically. You may have witnessed lots of fighting, yelling, or conflict growing up, so reacting quickly feels familiar and somehow comfortable.

  You may get triggered or activated by a stimulus or emotion easily. Navigating traffic, dealing with a slow computer, getting your defiant kid’s shoes on, being criticized, hearing loud noises or yelling, or feeling helpless, confused, or not in control—those current feelings or events may be somehow reminiscent of an earlier event or trauma, which can then quickly bring on a stronger reaction than appropriate.

• Constriction/Rigidity Growing up in a home that did not tolerate emotional expression, operated from a place of numbness or denial, or that defaulted to a ‘stiff upper lip’ or ‘we don’t talk about that’ creed, may result in you showing a restricted range of feelings or behaviors in your adult life—ones that you are comfortable feeling or expressing. You may need to feel like things are under control, stable and predictable, which can lead to less spontaneity and more inflexibility.

• Difficulty Trusting Growing up in an environment that was unreliable, unpredictable, or abusive, you may have lost the ability to trust, or have faith in, people, groups, institutions, yourself. You may especially not like, or trust authority figures, yet also may want those authority figures to love you. Oftentimes, alongside difficulty trusting is a tendency to isolate. If you can’t rely on others, may as well go it alone. Challenges around being vulnerable, forming and maintaining relationships, and communicating wants and needs are common.

• Denying or Defending To manage fear, pain, or feeling trapped, you may have instinctively utilized certain psychological defenses as a kid, that you may still continue to use, perhaps without even knowing it.

  Denial (it didn’t happen) Dissociation (checking out) Repression (stuffing down or pushing away the feelings) Minimization (it really wasn’t that bad) Projection (launching our pain onto someone) Splitting (someone or something is either all good or all bad).

• Relationship Challenges If you have experienced a trauma or repeated dysfunctional pattern within the sphere of a primary relationship (mom, dad, caregiver, sibling) you may re-create those dysfunctional patterns you imprinted growing up. Something in the present may reflect something unresolved from the past.

  You might be a ‘people pleaser’ or seek approval from others, you might look for someone else to help you feel better, or OK about yourself. You might have a really hard time being vulnerable or intimate with another person. You might have a hard time accepting or asking for help. It might be hard to take in love or support from another person. You might try to rescue people. You might be really afraid of being abandoned or left, and you may work very hard to prevent that from happening.

• Shame and Guilt Shame (per Brene Brown’s definition) can be thought of as ‘I am bad’. Guilt can be thought of as ‘I did something bad’. Oftentimes, growing up in an addicted or dysfunctional home, shame and guilt are so pervasive that they can affect your whole makeup. From having a lack of zest for life, impulsivity, inability to make decisions, isolating, feeling unworthy of being loved or giving love, experiencing body sensations—a tense shiver, caved in shoulders or chest, head down when walking. All of these elements often lead back to shame or guilt.

• Depression, Despair, Hopelessness Isolating can increase depression. Feeling alone in your experience—and possibly silenced by stigma or secret-keeping—can increase despair. Also, having a hard time regulating big surges of emotion can lead to feeling that you’ll never be able to escape feeling so bad or that this pattern is never-ending. Because we lived in chaos and often experienced trauma, our limbic system (which regulates mood) has been whacked out for quite some time. There are ways to calm our limbic system and re-wire what feels automatic!

• Self-Medicating, Impulsivity, Drama Self-medicating with substances, food, work, exercise, shopping, shows, can make the pain go away in the short term. And in the long term, it creates more problems than it solves. You may be impulsive or drawn to ‘drama’ or excitement. It may seem natural and normal to ride the surges of energy that these things bring. And sometimes, in dysfunctional homes, drama takes the place of showing love.

• Unresolved Grief and Loss There are so many losses involved in addicted or dysfunctional homes. Often intertwined with sadness and grief are anger, resentment, and depression. You’ve lost parents you could rely on, family members may have died from addiction… the losses are many. It is important to eventually grieve what happened (or what was never able to happen). You may feel surges of grief around the holidays, birthdays, seasons, or rituals.

If you made it this far, you might be feeling some feelings. I want you to know this is normal. I wrote a lot of heavy information—my intention is to help you feel more educated about what the effects are and how they might play out in your life.

Some next steps to feeling better are to start figuring out solutions, maybe by finding a person you feel comfortable with—someone who gets it—who can listen, offer suggestions and encouragement. That could be a therapist, counselor, support group…

If you have unresolved issues from the past, trauma therapy can help. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.

Things to Know About Trauma and COVID-19

As we are all experiencing this pandemic, it may be helpful to consider that a large portion of humanity is experiencing trauma—or disconnection (from yourself, your sense of safety, your sense of normalcy). If you have gone through past traumas, your history may be impacting how you are coping with current life. And as easy as it can be to talk nasty to yourself when you find yourself unraveling, please know that you aren’t powerless, a bad person or defective. There are ways to deal.

Here is some info that could help:

1. Parts of our brain may have shut down so that we can survive, cope, deal.

2. Because we may be shut-down on some level, we can’t fully take in—or process—the events that are unfolding—either around us, or globally.

3. Feeling out of touch, numb, foggy, disconnected is normal.

4. You may feel anxious/overly-vigilant or depressed/unmotivated/lethargic—or swing back and forth between the two.

5. You may not immediately be able to deeply process or reflect on what you are currently going through.

6. Try to lower your expectations and ‘shoulds’. It’s ok to just get by, to focus on functioning. You don’t have to organize, clean or improve—unless you truly want to.

7. Practice putting a slight smile on your face. This bodily expression cues the brain and nervous system to soften. Then notice if you can utilize kindness (to yourself and to others) as a way to increase your ability to function.

If you are showing signs of trauma because of the pandemic , trauma therapy can help. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.