What is Experiential Avoidance? How You Might Be Avoiding More Than Living

As a rule, we all want to avoid painful, uncomfortable, and unpleasant things in life. When it’s bitterly cold outside, we prefer to stay next to the heater or rug up inside. Instead of getting started on an assignment it’s much more tempting to scroll social media. And even when we know there are a bunch of unread messages in our inbox waiting for a reply, we might avoid even looking at them. These are all examples of experiential avoidance. But what is experiential avoidance? And how might it be affecting your life?

What is Experiential Avoidance?

According to the APA dictionary of Psychology avoidance is defined as “the practice of keeping away from particular situations, environments, individuals or things, because of the anxious or painful feelings associated with them.” Experiential avoidance is avoidance of our own internal experiences. Rather than keeping away from an external situation or trigger, we are running away from ourselves!

Is Experiential Avoidance Harmful?

Experiential avoidance is a very normal part of being a human. It’s natural to try and minimise suffering in life- there are so many difficult things we can’t escape from! However, over-relying on experiential avoidance can also lead to harmful impacts on our mental health and well-being. For example, if you never leave your home because it’s cold outside, this will affect both your physical health and social life. Or if you procrastinate studying, then you will likely fail your exams or create enormous stress cramming. 

When we try to escape negative thoughts and feelings in the short-term, this leads to even greater harm to ourselves in the long-term. 

Some extreme and harmful forms of experiential avoidance might be drinking excessively, addictive gaming and pornography, withdrawing socially or self-harm behaviours. While psychologists classify these behaviours as symptoms of mental health disorders, they are actually attempts to cope with and manage emotions.

In essence, experiential avoidance is just an unhelpful emotion regulation strategy (read more here).

Fortunately, there are other more helpful ways that we can manage painful or uncomfortable emotions other than using experiential avoidance. Here are some of them. 

Better Ways of Managing Your Emotions

1. Create space for your thoughts and feelings

There are lots of little ways we block out our thoughts and feelings, which is how experiential avoidance starts sneaking into our lives. One of the subtle ways I would engage in experiential avoidance is by making sure there was always some background noise, whether music or a podcast, when doing chores around the house. Recently, I’ve tried to do some brief but boring activities, like the dishes or filing my paperwork, in complete silence. At first, this was quite confronting, and I noticed some uncomfortable feelings of boredom, annoyance and dread coming through. I also noticed that sometimes negative or judgemental thoughts and ruminations would come through too. By creating space for these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, I’m increasing my ability to tolerate being in my own head (which isn’t easy for an overthinker!) and I’m becoming less avoidant. 

While music or background noise is not a harmful form of experiential avoidance, it is important to consider whether you are giving enough space to your thoughts and feelings. 

Some other ways of creating space might be to journal your thoughts and feelings, talk to a friend or therapist or simply check-in with yourself throughout the day. When we allow ourselves to experience and observe our thoughts and feelings we give them an outlet, which actually helps to relieve and resolve them. If we over-rely on experiential avoidance, then we just end up bottling them up or running away from them. 

2. Consider the costs of avoidance in the long-term

For those of us who are socially anxious (read more here), there can be short-term relief in experiential avoidance- declining social invitations, avoiding social interactions, putting off replying to messages or not making the effort with new relationships. However, there are enormous costs to these forms of experiential avoidance- loneliness, isolation, low self-esteem, hurt feelings in relationships and ultimately regret.

As humans we are motivated by both the costs and the benefits of certain activities. It’s important to remind ourselves that while we might feel uncomfortable or anxious in the short-term, in the long-term we are avoiding the even greater pain and distress that comes from experiential avoidance.

This is a conversation I often have with people trying to find a relationship or engaging in online dating. In the short-term, fear of rejection, frustration, anxiety and vulnerability are all ripe emotions for experiential avoidance. However, in the long-term learning to face and tolerate these emotions is the only way to find a meaningful relationship.

If you would like a tool to track your go-to avoidance behaviours (and reflect on how they might be costing you) then click here.

3. Try Other Emotion Regulation Strategies

If you can see that some of your go-to experiential avoidance strategies are having a negative impact on yourself or others, it might be helpful to try some different emotion regulation strategies. Exercise (read here) is a powerful way of releasing stress (negative emotions) and increasing endorphins (positive emotions) that doesn’t have the potentially harmful side effects that binge-drinking, binge-watching or gaming have.

Some other emotion regulation strategies might include deep breathing exercises, a cold burst of water in the shower, taking a hot bath or getting a massage.

Talking about our thoughts and feelings is another powerful emotion regulation strategy, but if we have been relying on experiential avoidance for a long time, it might be overwhelming to know where to start or even to put these experiences into words. Which is why therapy is a great way of overcoming experiential avoidance, in the safety of a space with a trained professional to help guide and support you along the way. 

---

In many ways, we are wired towards experiential avoidance – getting rid of negative emotions, avoiding suffering and protecting ourselves. But there are significant costs to living life in avoidance mode- we miss out on connecting with both ourselves and others. In what ways might you be avoiding more than living?