As we talked about earlier, no one likes to experience uncomfortable emotions like anxiety or sadness or anger. Often, when that happens, we do things so we won’t have to feel them. This is called emotional avoidance - something we do to prevent us from feeling a negative emotion or to keep it from getting stronger.
There are several ways that you might try to avoid an emotion.
- Subtle behavioural avoidance – actions you engage in for distraction, when you can’t escape an uncomfortable situation
- Cognitive avoidance – doing mental gymnastics to tune out a thought. This could include tuning out, distracting yourself with other thoughts
- Safety signals – these are things you carry around with you because you believe they will help you cope.