Anxiety and avoidance go together hand in hand, and avoidance can be the most disabling part of an anxiety problem. Avoidance robs us of our choices. For some with serious anxiety problems, their homes become prisons because anxiety based avoidance has taken away their freedom. To get your freedom back and get control over your anxiety, you must overcome avoidance.
It is natural to want to avoid things that make us uncomfortable, and anxiety is certainly uncomfortable. If we avoid an anxiety provoking situation, the immediate effect of that avoidance can be that our anxiety does decrease. However, in decreasing anxiety that way, we are giving ourselves a message that we can’t handle that situation, which undermines our confidence. Lower confidence leads us to question whether we can face other similar situations, thus leading to more avoidance. Self doubt like this increases our anxiety. So even if avoidance decreases anxiety in the short run, it most certainly increases anxiety in the long run. In this way anxiety and avoidance operate in a vicious cycle.
The main clinical approach for confronting avoidance is called desensitization, or we can call it exposure steps. This involves exposing ourselves to anxiety provoking situations in a step-wise fashion rather than all at once. So if I have anxiety in crowded places, I don’t go to Walmart the weekend before Christmas as my first step, but maybe go to the grocery store at a time when it is not too busy. If we start with a manageable step and have success, the success increases our confidence. The confidence and associated increased self esteem make it easier to take the next step. In this way we can have a virtuous cycle of success and confidence that replaces the anxiety-avoidance vicious cycle. You can keep making progress with your exposure steps if the steps are challenging but not overwhelming. Continuing to make progress in that way puts you back in control of your life and gives you back the freedom that the avoidance had taken away. To get your life back and fight for your freedom, you have to confront avoidance.