Avoidance is to be Avoided

Avoidance:  Any behaviors people use to escape or distract themselves from difficult thoughts, feelings, and situations. 

And the good doctor sayeth . . .

 "For some people, trapped on a treadmill of obligation, the disadvantages of diminished functioning and physical pain are counterbalanced by the relief of lowered expectations.  This is a dangerous development in that those aspects of our characters that we incorporate into our sense of ourselves are sub-conscious and resistant to change.  And, in the case of a life constricted by anxiety, people need to muster the determination to confront their fears and stop giving in to them.  This approach manifests the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse; confrontation gradually improves it."

I was attending a grief group after my dad died and one of the monitors of the group admonished me thusly: "Pay attention to your anxiety.  There's a message there.  What is it trying to tell you?'

Man, I am a master of avoidance.  When something is painful, I just want to get the fuck away from it.  Confront it?  Pay attention to it?  That's crazy shit, man