Ask a therapist: To lower anxiety, avoid this at all costs!

Hi, this is Kate with Destiny City Counseling, and just coming to you today with another “Ask a Therapist” question. And today, I just want to address the very common question that I get all the time in therapy, which is people just wanting to know “what can I do to reduce my anxiety?” And so I just wanted to give you a tip on how to lower anxiety. And so this is the number one thing to avoid if you want to lower your anxiety, so that all costs, whatever you do to lower your anxiety: avoid AVOIDING! Avoid “avoidance!”

So avoidance is the fuel for anxiety. Basically, if there's something you're afraid of doing, it's human nature. We don't necessarily want to face that fear. It's not comfortable. And so we'll do whatever we can oftentimes to avoid it. But what we don't realize is that by avoiding something, we are actually empowering that anxiety to grow and to become more powerful in our lives.

And so to give an example, one that I deal with is I don't like going to the dentist. So if I avoid and put off making that appointment for my cleaning, then there's that pressure of, “I know I should make this call. I know I should do it.” But then, I don't want to and I feel fearful, and so if I let myself off the hook and I give myself permission and I say, “well, I'll put it off a couple more weeks, what will that matter?” Immediately, the brain gets a reward. It gets a little hit; the fear of having to face that thing is removed. And so the brain is like, “oh, I feel so much better!” And so what we've just done there is we've reinforced the learning in the brain that says, one, I can't handle that fear and two, avoidance feels good.

And so the brain learns that avoidance feels good and it strengthens that avoidance pathway in the brain. And while that feels good in the short-term, in the long-term, what that does is it actually increases our anxiety because the next time we have to be in that situation where, say now it's two weeks later, and I need to make that call to the dentist, the resistance that I feel to making that call is even more so at this point. The anxiety I feel about doing that thing has been strengthened because I've been actually further entrenching and rewarding that avoidance cycle in my brain. This is how learning gets wired into the brain. The brain gets a hit, a reward anytime we avoid something. And the more you strengthen, they say neurons that fire together, wire together. So when I fire brain cells of avoidance, I'm also lighting up my reward circuits in the brain. And so those two things become very connected.

So in order to break the pattern of avoidance, we have to actually face the thing that we're afraid of. And what we're doing there is we're facing that fear and we are trying to wire our brain with qualities of resilience, of being able to be in uncomfortable situations and to handle it. And that's the neural connections that we want to strengthen. So unfortunately, with anxiety there's no easy way out. Anytime we're dealing with anxiety, almost always the treatment plan is going to have to involve facing that thing that we're afraid of. That's the sucky news about it. But basically, by avoiding avoidance, we will disempower anxiety and start to deconstruct it so it doesn't have a hold on us.

And when we put yourself in an anxious situation, you're putting yourself in a new situation to basically learn that, “oh, you know what? This isn't as bad as I thought. I actually can handle this. I'm actually more resilient than I imagined that I was. I have the ability to handle uncomfortable situations.” And then, more learning occurs in the brain and your brain learns you don’t have to be afraid of thing because you are up to the challenge.

So this is how anxiety is deconstructed over time. So, yeah, there you have it. Avoid avoidance. So next time there's something that you're feeling anxious about, when you feel that temptation to avoid, try to remember that by avoiding, you're feeding a protein shake to that anxiety. You're pumping it up. And instead, you want to let that thing wither and you want to feed your resilience and your ability to tackle that thing. So just do it.

One of my favorite productivity hacks is you guys might've heard a quote by Mark Twain to the effect that if you know on your to do list that day you're going to have to eat a living bullfrog, you're not going to be able to think of anything else until you do it. It's so uncomfortable a task. You might as well get it out of the way first because you're just going to be living in dread oven until you do. So with anxiety, it's kind of that idea of eat the frog, just go for it and get it out of the way, and start strengthening those resilience circuits.

So, I hope that's helpful. Feel free to leave any questions in the comments or message me, and would love to share any helpful tips that I can. And I hope you guys have a great week.