Nine Psychology Strategies For Avoidance Coping
Feel like you’re avoiding something? Many of us have experienced various situations in life that have been uncomfortable. These experiences, if left unaddressed, can lead to a behavior known to many as “avoidance coping.”
The American Psychological Association defines avoidance coping as any kind of strategy that may help someone manage stressful circumstances by disengaging from the situation, possibly driving attention away from it rather than addressing the problem directly.
Examples of avoidance coping can include “escaping” from stress, wishful thinking, isolating restraining emotions, or self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. Online therapy and other supportive strategies can help people who may be engaging in avoidant behaviors, possibly elevating their quality of life. Read on to learn more.
What is the long-term effect of avoidance coping?
We’ve given examples of avoidance coping above—but you may be wondering what the true long-term effects of avoidance coping might be.
People might think avoidance coping can be helpful, because they believe that it might reduce stress and overwhelm. Unfortunately, however, many sources note that these behaviors can create stress and nervousness—possibly breaking down self-confidence.
Eventually, over time, your feelings will likely rise to the surface, and the longer and deeper you push them down, the more explosive and harmful they may be when they emerge. Online therapy and other supportive strategies can be integral to avoiding this outcome.
Healthy versus unhealthy coping strategies: alternatives to avoidance coping
Below, we’ve listed some common examples of avoidance coping strategies:
- Refraining from taking actions that trigger painful memories, like not calling someone back if you think the conversation will be uncomfortable
- Keeping a low-profile, or not striving to be the best—possibly so that you don’t call attention to yourself
- Putting things off because you don’t want to know the truth, like not going to the dentist when you have a toothache
- Steering clear of situations that might make someone mad at you
- Starting to pursue something and then backpedaling when nervousness sets in
Now that we know what to look for, it can be easier to identify possible alternatives. For example: Something you can do to make it easier to leave an avoidance coping strategy behind is to replace avoidant (or passive) coping with an assertive (or active) coping strategy. An active coping strategy is not generally considered to be maladaptive—in fact, it can be the opposite. Active coping strategies can be both healthy and effective in both the short term and the long term.
Below, we’ve listed nine (more) active coping strategies that can help you replace your avoidance coping habits—possibly helping you to manage stress and uncomfortable situations in healthier ways.
Identify avoidance coping habits and understand why they’re maladaptive
You may already know what these are for you—and if not, the next best step for you to take may be to schedule an appointment with a licensed therapist. By putting a name to these strategies, you may be able to take your goals seriously and try some active coping strategies instead.
Note situations that preclude your avoidance coping strategies
Do certain situations always make you anxious? Do you dismiss them and try to get your mind off them? Instead of having a knee-jerk avoidance response for short-term stress relief, you can learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings, create healthy habits, and reduce stress in the long term.
Practice stress-reducing exercises
Often, the biggest struggle for people who use avoidance coping face can be getting their stress under control. There are many ways to quiet your mind and your body to reduce stress. You can choose a calming activity like yoga, mindfulness, or listening to music or relaxing sounds to get your body into a relaxed state.
When you use only passive coping strategies and avoidance behaviors, you can exacerbate stress. But, if you approach coping with more proactive strategies and healthy habits like meditation, yoga, walking or other relaxation techniques, you may find that the behaviors positively affect your mental health.
Establish an emotional outlet
One of the most harmful things that you can do if you’re stressed is to bottle up your emotions. You may find that you’ll feel better if you can find a release for them. Depending on your personality and your emotional makeup, you can do this using either a physical or non-physical outlet. You may benefit from engaging in some aerobic activity, like taking a walk or run, or performing some type of physical activity to release your emotions. For some people, meditating or journaling is a good emotional outlet.
Develop better ways of communicating about conflict
You may have ideas about how to resolve potential conflicts—but actually putting your ideas into words that other people are receptive to can be challenging, even for people who are naturally good communicators. During these times, it can help to remember the difference between being assertive and being aggressive. When you use the right words, you can often come to a meaningful agreement that works in everyone’s favor.
Think small
Try to find an accountability partner
If you regularly feel an avoidance toward certain things, you may lose your confidence to follow through on using active coping strategies even when you’ve planned everything in advance. If you don’t do so well, it may help to have a support partner who will encourage you to try again. It may be easier to stick with your plan when you know someone supportive is waiting in the wings to hear all about it.
Enlist the help of a licensed professional therapist
Even when you know what to do, it can be difficult to follow through on getting rid of your old avoidance coping habits completely on your own. An online therapist can help keep you accountable.
How can online therapy help those experiencing avoidance?
Licensed therapists are generally prepared to help you find active ways of handling situations that are troubling you in an efficient way, such as the ability to identify active coping options, practice communication skills and learn techniques to control the body’s stress response.
Online therapy with BetterHelp can be an effective and convenient option so you can schedule your sessions in the comfort of your own home—which can make therapy more convenient for those who feel overwhelmed or avoidant at the prospect of leaving home or a safe space for therapy and support.
Is online therapy effective?
Many studies have yielded results affirming the effectiveness of online therapy in helping people who use avoidance coping tactics to both face their fears or uncomfortable emotions and develop active coping strategies.
In a meta-analysis of virtual reality exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (VRE-CBT), researchers found that the intervention was just as successful as in-person CBT in treating more severe anxiety disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
If you are experiencing trauma, support is available. Please see our Get Help Now page for more resources.
A separate study aimed to test an online CBT model’s efficacy of supporting college students in developing active coping strategies to treat depression, stress, anxiety, and/or insomnia. Conclusions indicated that the method was promising as a supplement to traditional face-to-face counseling.
Takeaway
When we avoid initiating important conversations or taking necessary steps to solve the challenges in our lives, we can invite significantly more stress into our worlds. This can be resolved by directly addressing avoidant behaviors in our lives.
If you feel scared, that’s okay. The important thing to remember is that our humanness can allow us to reason past basic responses. We can acknowledge our fear while stepping confidently into the future.You can take that first step today by reaching out to a licensed support therapist at BetterHelp.
Why is avoidance often an ineffective method of coping?
Avoidant coping is considered a maladaptive coping method, as it creates a cycle for more stress. In most cases, confronting and resolving an issue is the best way to deal with it, and to relieve stress long term. By developing behaviors that avoid a problem, a person may avoid stress in the moment, but the problem remains and will only exacerbate anxiety after the initial relief.
How does avoidance coping develop?
Avoidance strategies are a learned behavior, often developing early in life and reinforced during stressful situations. People who experience anxiety or depressive symptoms are more likely to have learned avoidance techniques early as a method of stress avoidance, according to research published in the Journal of Personality and other mental health publications.
Is avoidance an emotion-focused coping strategy?
Yes, avoidant behaviors are triggered by an emotional response. The person who uses these strategies feels something that they don’t like, and perceives that emotion as a threat against which they must defend themselves against.
Does avoidance reinforce anxiety?
Avoidance will often help soothe feelings of anxiety in the moment, but it does not address the cause of the stress. Therefore, a coping skill that involves avoidance sets you up to feel stress after the momentary relief passes, often with additional stress generation due to the guilt felt for using the avoidance strategy. (For example, using food or alcohol to soothe stress)
Is avoidance a healthy coping mechanism?
In clinical psychology, avoidant coping strategies are classed as maladaptive, or unhealthy coping methods. That is because in most cases, these are not effective coping strategies. Typically, avoidance will simply defer and then increase anxiety. Healthy coping strategies will build resilience as well as manage stress in the moment.
How do avoidance behaviors affect self-esteem?
Avoidance behaviors can have a negative impact on self-esteem, according to social and clinical psychology research.
Why is avoidance behavior maintained?
Simply put, because it’s the easier path for most people. Because we typically learn avoidance behaviors early, and they are reinforced over time, it can be easier to continue using these behaviors than learning active cognitive coping strategies.
Is avoidance a learned behavior?
Some people have personality traits that tend toward avoidance, but it is also a learned behavior. When a person finds that an avoidance behavior offers a temporary relief from negative emotions, they will tend to revisit this behavior over and over again (reinforcement).
The American Psychological Association (APA) identifies some of the most common avoidance behaviors as wishful thinking, escapism, self-isolation, undue emotional restraint, and constant use of drugs or alcohol.
Why is avoidance coping an important factor in anxiety?
Studies have found a link between avoidance coping and increased anxiety in individuals. Avoidance in most cases exacerbates anxiety, which in turn leads to more avoidance, creating a cycle of anxiety. Theoretical and clinical aspects of the research are examining the connection and how to best disrupt and redirect avoidant learning patterns into healthier coping strategies.
Why is avoidance not healthy for sustaining positive relationships?
To maintain a healthy relationship, you want to use strategies other than avoidance coping. Honest communication and conflict resolution skills are key to a positive relationship dynamic, and avoidance is not going to help facilitate these behaviors. Practice communication skills and positive stress management techniques to strengthen a relationship, working with a licensed therapist can help in these areas.
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