The Things You’ve Started To Avoid

You may not think of yourself as someone who avoids things. You've just found ways around them.

The long route rather than the bridge. The train rather than the flight. Someone else can do the presentation. You'll go, but only if you know you can leave when you want to.

And usually there's a perfectly good explanation. You've probably got quite good at providing them.

The thing is, most of these things weren't always a problem. You used to drive over the bridge. Fly somewhere. Stand up in front of a room without needing a detailed escape plan.

Then something changed. It might have been one particular experience. It might be harder to put your finger on than that. But somewhere along the way, avoiding the thing became easier than dealing with how it made you feel.

Avoiding something usually works, at least in the short term. You don't have to do the thing, and you feel better. The trouble is that your mind notices.

So next time, avoiding it feels like an even better idea. And before long, you can find yourself putting quite a lot of effort into not doing something you once did without giving it a second thought.

That's often when people start to notice. Sometimes it's you. You want to do something and realise you've already decided you can't. Sometimes somebody else notices first. Your partner wonders why you never take the motorway anymore. A colleague points out that you always seem to have something else on when presentations come round. Someone asks a perfectly innocent question and you suddenly realise you have been doing quite a lot of explaining.

That's usually the point at which the workaround stops feeling like a workaround. The problem isn't necessarily the bridge, the flight or the meeting. It's that your life has gradually started to organise itself around not having to deal with them. And perhaps that isn't the life you want to be leading.

The good news is that avoidance is a pattern, and patterns can change.
You don't have to force yourself to face everything at once or prove that you're brave enough. It is more useful to understand what has happened, why the response has stuck around, and what needs to change.

A free 30-minute call is the simplest way to find out whether this is the right kind of help for what you're carrying. There's no obligation and no hard sell. If it's not a good fit, I'll say so, and I'll do my best to point you somewhere more useful.