Experiencing and fully embracing painful emotions like sadness, fear, grief, regret, or loss can be challenging. To cope, our minds often resort to avoidance strategies. While these methods may offer immediate relief from emotional discomfort, they also involve suppression, which can lead to long-term emotional and even physical consequences.
Recognizing Avoidance Strategies
If you frequently rely on cognitive avoidance strategies, you might not always be aware of them. Here are some examples of cognitive avoidance strategies:
- Feeling overly responsible, taking blame for things that aren’t your fault
- Believing you must accept certain conditions or situations
- Blaming others for mistakes to avoid personal responsibility
- Overthinking and overanalyzing to gain clarity on your emotions
- Using positive avoidance by refocusing or convincing yourself that you are “better” for enduring it
- Comparing your situation to make it seem smaller or less significant
- Catastrophizing by perceiving your experiences as worse than others’
It can be challenging to recognize these thinking patterns, particularly if they are a regular part of how we cope with emotions, situations, or dilemmas. Essentially, cognitive avoidance strategies give us the illusion that we can think or ruminate our way through difficult feelings or emotions. By understanding that your feelings are not the same as external threats or absolute facts, you can gain more control over how you process them. Your internal world is separate from any perceived external dangers.
Shifting Your Worrying Thoughts
Shifting your perspective involves becoming more aware of cognitive avoidance strategies. By observing and naming these patterns, you can dig deeper and find more authentic and effective ways to respond. Here are a few reflection questions to guide you as you explore cognitive avoidance strategies:
- What situations tend to trigger your cognitive avoidance strategies?
- Which strategies do you rely on most frequently?
- What emotions (such as loneliness, sadness, fear, etc.) prompt you to use cognitive avoidance strategies?
- What other ways can you cope with difficult emotions?
- Can you recall a time when you successfully processed your emotions without using avoidance strategies?
If you recognize a pattern of cognitive avoidance or using analytical thinking to avoid difficult emotions, it might be helpful to explore this further through mindfulness practices, connecting with a mental health professional, or discussing emotional well-being with your coach.