You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Abraham Lincoln

Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that you genuinely wish that a problem would be gone in the next blink of your eyes? Imagine that you are contemplating breaking up with the person you have been with for a long time. Or resolving a heated argument with your boss. Or paying a huge bill. Occasionally the wish to avoid the responsibility of making a decision or resolving a conflict can be so strong that you accept that the stressor does not exist. You keep going as if there is no problem in your life. Sooner or later, something will come to take a bite of your peace. And the creature has sharp teeth. 

Avoidance can mean denying, minimising the importance, or avoiding dealing with stressful situations altogether. Part of avoidance’s close companions are fear, anxiety and depression. I have used avoidance as a coping strategy for most of my life, although I just started to realise that I have done so. One day I received an email detailing a very uncomfortable and complex situation at work. I noticed that my initial reaction was to click on “Mark as Unread” and to keep going through the next two days as if nothing happened. I hardly slept: my mental focus kept going back to the problem and I forcefully kept pushing it away. That was a big red flag for me.

What does avoidance feel like?

The danger in deploying avoidance is that you start to feel delusional and out of space, out of your body. You lose trust in yourself, and your inability to make decisions leaves you paralysed. You start to change how you comprehend your reality and break with it. Life is dynamic, and that is the beauty of it. It constantly flows like a river. If you try to stall it, the water’s strength will resist.

The ability to pretend something does not exist is a survival mechanism, and as such, it has also served us well to a certain extent. But it is a short-term strategy with short-term benefits. I recently read the Almanack of Naval Ravikal in which Naval has been quoted that, as a rule of thumb, what is beneficial in the short term is usually quite the opposite in the long term. Think of a situation where you constantly skip your workouts because you feel lazy. Or you are aimlessly scrolling through social media instead of finishing an important project. 

All that being said, if you feel that an avoidance strategy is not serving you well, here is what you may try to do. I need to note that I have not found the perfect solution that works for me. What I share with you is what I have attempted in the past. You may try to see if it works for you, or you may use it as an example of what not to do. It is totally up to you to do your own thing. It took me a while to realise, but you do not want another person to make your decisions. You are in control of figuring out this life.

Understand and accept that you may feel discomfort from time to time

Do not fear discomfort, it is a nuance of life. Easier said than done, but practice accepting discomfort into your life. Avoiding discomfort at all cost is one of the reasons we deploy avoidance in the first place. When we avoid a problem, we teach our brain that the situation is indeed something to be feared and it is something we cannot cope with. When discomfort comes, take a big breath and welcome it.

Face your fears

Facing your fears requires an enormous amount of courage, but the feeling afterwards is liberating. I am terrified of heights and I tend to freeze if I can look down and see that I am at the edge of a few-metres-deep abyss. Last year, I ticked a big item off my bucket list – sky diving. It felt nice to say “Not this time.” to my usual reaction to heights.

Let the problem sink in. Then break it into smaller pieces.

This is a tricky one because the mechanism can easily slip into avoidance if you do not tolerate discomfort. The idea is that when a big problem arrives you should define it in your head, take a breath and accept it. Stand up, go for a walk. Just move. Let the defined problem sink subconsciously in your head. Then come back to it after a short period of time. When you come back to it, approach it in small chunks. You may be surprised by the solutions you came up with! 

Plan your week

Every Sunday (or a day of your choice) I set aside 30 minutes to drink a tea and visualise the most important themes in the week to come. I am not a fan of rigid schedules, but if you are – do your thing. The important thing is to give enough time for some structure to appear in your head (or on paper), no matter the detail. 

Have you ever reflected on what are your patterns of avoidance? How do you cope with them? We would love to hear from you.