I keep noticing the same thing – in my clinical work, in the media, in my friends, and in myself. We’re good at avoiding what otherwise might help. The more I observe it, the more I’m convinced that avoidance is one of our biggest problems.
We don’t avoid because we want to make our lives worse. We avoid because it works – it makes sense.
Acknowledging painful facts, taking responsibility, and asking for help are inherently risky. Each makes us vulnerable to an uncertain outcome. Not having control is frightening. So we avoid doing, feeling, or encountering the perceived threat.
And. We’re quick to overestimate the probability of danger and underestimate the likelihood that we’ll be okay. Our threat-detection systems evolved to err on the side of danger, even in ambiguous or neutral situations, to keep us alive.
Across many psychological theories, avoidance shows up as a process that exacerbates long-term distress. We avoid external situations, internal experiences, or cues of perceived threat – all functioning to reduce contact with something aversive. Avoidance turns us away from what hurts.
Each theory describes processes related to avoidance in different terms, such as suppression, denial, psychological inflexibility, and distraction. The shared function is short-term relief at the cost of long-term alignment with our values.
This leads me to a few questions. First, why do so many theories describe similar processes using different terms?
I think it’s because avoidance is functional. The same behavior can serve different functions, and different behaviors can serve the same function. Avoidance is defined by what the behavior accomplishes, not by what it looks like.
And function is harder to observe than form – we can name withdrawal, we can’t always name the relief that maintains it. We’re often unaware why a behavior repeatedly occurs – we just know we feel better, at least temporarily.
Consider the behaviors often labeled problematic – substance use, disordered eating, excessive screen time, gambling, dissociation – what function can they share? Reducing contact with experiences that feel painful. And they work momentarily – they protect us from things we don’t want, or don’t yet know how, to tolerate.
The same function can appear across different diagnoses. A diagnosis describes a behavioral pattern without explaining what maintains it – or what the behaviors themselves might protect someone from.
I tend to view these behaviors as learned protection strategies for experiences that otherwise feel intolerable. Exploring this, recognizing the function in dysfunction, can help people open up to change.
I wonder what might happen if we treated avoidance as one possible function of behavior and became more curious about the why and less fixated on the what. If we might better identify what’s maintaining the behavior and target the right process for change.
Shifting the focus to function, and exploring why a behavior labeled problematic might make sense in the context of the environment and learning history, can offer validation. This can remove blame and reduce the defensiveness that often emerges when we treat someone’s behavior as a problem to fix. And when we see behavior as protection, rather than a character flaw, shame – an emotion that often intensifies avoidance – takes up less space.
My own default is avoidance. I’ve said the hard thing and been punished, so I prefer that people read my mind. And, as much as I wish my partner had that skill, she doesn’t. I’m working on answering with something other than “fine” when I’m feeling anything but. What I notice is that the more I open up to her about my emotions, the more connected to her I feel. The more of me she knows, the less of me I feel the need to hide.
Interestingly, DBT doesn’t name avoidance as a primary problem – unlike Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, another third-wave approach, which places experiential avoidance at the center of psychological inflexibility.
One possibility is that DBT approaches related processes through a more explicitly nonjudgmental and validating frame. Yet the foundational dialectical philosophy emphasizes continuously searching for what’s missing. The practice is to keep looking for the kernel of truth in any perspective. And the behavioral approach to this directly questions the function of any behavior – for why the behavior makes sense.
Avoidance, then, might be one behavioral expression of nonacceptance. It prevents change by feeling like protection – which, at times, it genuinely is. The work is getting curious about when it’s helpful and when it’s harmful.
Whatever we call it, avoidance is a process that pulls us away from a life worth living. Naming the function helps replace judgment with curiosity.
It asks us to consider: is this working as protection or pulling me away from my values?
Exploring what it offers immediately – relief – helps us understand why it persists. More on that next.