Anxiety and Avoidance: How Anxiety Quietly Makes Your World Smaller

Have you ever decided not to do something because you knew it would make you anxious?

Perhaps you turned down an invitation. You let somebody else drive. You avoided speaking in a meeting, changed where you shop or made an excuse not to attend something you’d been worrying about.

Immediately afterwards, you probably felt better. That’s the problem with anxiety and avoidance.

Avoidance works incredibly well in the short term. The frightening situation disappears and your anxiety settles. You feel relieved. Yet that relief can inadvertently teach your brain that avoiding the situation was what kept you safe.

The next time something similar happens, anxiety returns. Over time, you can start avoiding more and more.

After helping hundreds of people with anxiety in Ely, Newmarket and online, I’ve seen how subtly this can happen. Most people don’t suddenly decide they’re going to stop doing the things they enjoy. They simply make one understandable decision after another because they don’t want to experience all those uncomfortable anxious thoughts and feelings.

Gradually, life starts being organised around what feels safe rather than what you actually want to do.

Anxiety quietly makes your world smaller.

The encouraging part is that avoidance is a pattern. And patterns can be changed.

 

Quick Summary

Avoidance can make anxiety feel better temporarily, but repeatedly escaping or avoiding situations can reinforce the belief that those situations are threatening or that you won’t be able to cope.

In this article you’ll discover:

• why avoiding anxiety feels so effective at first
• how avoidance can make anxiety stronger over time
• the less obvious safety behaviours you may not realise you’re using
• how avoidance gradually restricts everyday life
• why simply forcing yourself through frightening situations isn’t always enough
• how to begin rebuilding confidence and taking back the parts of life anxiety has restricted

One of the biggest turning points is recognising the difference between choosing not to do something because you genuinely don’t want to and avoiding it because anxiety is making the decision for you.

 

Related Articles

• Anxiety Support Hub
• Fear of Losing Control and Anxiety
• How to Calm Anxiety In The Moment
• Why Anxiety Isn’t Going Away On Its Own
• Hypnotherapy Reviews in Ely

 

Why Avoidance Feels Like It Helps Anxiety

The classic behaviour that goes with anxiety is avoidance. Those anxious thoughts and feelings are so strong and uncomfortable that you make excuses, cancel plans or say and do whatever it takes to avoid going into that feared situation or environment. And if you can’t avoid it altogether, your anxiety will certainly lead to you escaping from there as soon as you practically can.

Imagine you’ve been worrying all week about giving a presentation at work. Every time you think about it, you picture yourself going blank, stumbling over your words or everyone noticing how anxious you look.

Your stomach churns, your heart races and you rehearse what you’re going to say over and over again. Then you discover there’s a way to avoid doing the presentation. Almost instantly, you feel better.

That relief is powerful.

Your anxious brain can effectively learn: “I escaped that situation and now I feel safe.”

The next time you’re asked to give a presentation, your mind already expects the same threat. You remember how bad you felt before and your anxiety starts warning you about everything that could go wrong. So the anxiety can start earlier and the urge to avoid becomes stronger. And avoiding it again brings another wave of relief.

This is how the anxiety and avoidance cycle can become established:

Anxiety → avoidance → relief → greater expectation of anxiety next time → more avoidance.

It doesn’t matter whether you are anxious about a presentation or if your anxiety is about something else. The same pattern of anxiety and avoidance gets established and repeats.

The frustrating part is that avoiding something can feel like exactly the right thing to do because it genuinely does reduce your anxiety at that moment. You feel so much better for not doing it.

It’s the longer-term consequences that cause the problem.

 

How Anxiety Gradually Makes Your World Smaller

Avoidance doesn’t always look dramatic. It can start with tiny changes.

• You stop driving on motorways but still drive locally.
• You go shopping, but only when you know the supermarket will be quiet.
• You attend social events but always leave early.
• You speak to people individually but stay silent in groups.
• You travel, but only if somebody you trust comes with you.
• You go into meetings but never volunteer an opinion.
• You eat at restaurants but only if you can sit somewhere that feels safe.

Individually, each adjustment may seem relatively insignificant. You may even explain it as something you prefer or how you like to do things.

But anxiety has a habit of moving the boundaries.

• One motorway becomes several roads.
• One uncomfortable social event becomes most social events.
• One crowded shop becomes avoiding busy places altogether.

Eventually, you may find yourself planning your day around avoiding situations, sensations or thoughts that might make you anxious.

I’ve worked with people whose lives had become increasingly restricted without them really noticing it happening. Sometimes it only becomes obvious when you suddenly realise how many things you no longer do. At other times, you’re faced with a situation you can’t avoid and discover just how much anxiety has grown around it.

They weren’t choosing the life they wanted. They were choosing whichever option seemed least likely to trigger anxiety.

 

Avoidance Isn’t Always Obvious

You don’t necessarily need to completely avoid a situation to be caught in an avoidance pattern.

Sometimes you still do the thing, but only because you’ve developed ways of trying to prevent or control the anxiety.

You might:

• always sit near the exit
• continually rehearse what you’re going to say
• need somebody you trust to accompany you
• check where the toilets or exits are before going somewhere
• carry particular items “just in case”
• repeatedly check your physical symptoms
• avoid eye contact or speaking
• leave as soon as anxiety starts rising
• only go somewhere at quieter times
• feel the need to be “in control” of what happens
• continually ask other people for reassurance

These are often called safety behaviours.

Some are perfectly ordinary behaviours in themselves. The important question is why you believe you need to do them.

If the underlying thought is: “I won’t be safe or able to cope unless I do this” then the behaviour can inadvertently keep that belief alive.

You don’t get the opportunity to discover that you may actually be able to handle the situation without all the precautions anxiety says you need.

 

Avoiding Feelings Can Keep Anxiety Going Too

Avoidance isn’t only about avoiding places and situations. You can also start trying to escape from the experience of anxiety itself.

• You feel your heart racing and immediately want it to stop.
• You notice an anxious thought and try to force it out of your mind.
• You feel uncomfortable and desperately look for reassurance that everything is okay.

You become frightened of feeling frightened. Before long, anxiety itself has become the next threat.

This can leave you constantly monitoring how you feel:

• “Am I anxious?”
• “Is my heart beating normally?”
• “What if I panic?”
• “What if I can’t cope?”

The more desperately you try to make sure anxiety never happens, the more attention you give it.

Learning how to calmly acknowledge anxious thoughts and feelings without immediately battling, suppressing or escaping them can be an important part of changing this pattern.

 

One Thing I Learned About Avoiding Anxiety

Back when I struggled with anxiety, avoidance was probably my favourite anxiety strategy for years.

If I could get out of something that frightened me, I would.

I called in sick to avoid giving presentations at work (and hoped no one noticed what I was doing).

If I was in a group, I’d often stay quiet because saying nothing felt safer than risking saying something stupid. As long as someone else was quiet then I was safe. If they spoke, I was hyper aware that I was now under pressure as the only person who hadn’t said anything.

Before interviews, I’d rehearse possible answers again and again. I thought being incredibly prepared would make me feel confident. Instead, I’d become even more focused on everything that might go wrong and sometimes ended up sounding robotic because I was desperately trying to remember what I’d practised.

If I could avoid being the centre of attention, I did. Every time I escaped something, I felt relieved. And that relief convinced me I’d made the right decision. Even if I initially wanted to do something, as the anxiety increased, my relief from avoiding it grew more appealing.

The problem was that I still had the anxiety. I hadn’t taught myself that I could cope. I’d simply become increasingly skilled at organising my life around avoiding feeling anxious. With my social anxiety, I consistently worried that others could notice when I felt anxious and when I was avoiding things.

At other times, I tried the opposite approach. I forced myself into situations because I thought that if I did frightening things often enough, anxiety would eventually disappear. I became a district councillor and a school governor, putting myself into situations involving meetings, groups and speaking.

Yet I could still feel intensely anxious. And avoidance still felt the most attractive option.

That taught me something important. For me, simply being in the situation, no matter how often, wasn’t enough if I was still running exactly the same anxious patterns while I was there.

I needed to change what I was doing with my thoughts and feelings, calm the physical anxiety and stop treating every uncomfortable situation as something I needed to survive.

Once that changed, doing things became very different.

I wasn’t just enduring them. I was becoming comfortable doing them. I could relax, be myself, and get on with life.

 

Watch: Anxiety and Avoidance

I also talked about anxiety, avoidance and escape in this earlier video, including why the immediate relief you get from avoiding something can inadvertently strengthen the pattern.

 

Why “Just Face Your Fears” Can Be Too Simplistic

You may have been told: “You’ve just got to face your fears.” And there is some truth behind the idea.

Continually avoiding safe situations can maintain anxiety, and gradually doing more of the things you’ve been avoiding can be an important part of becoming more confident.

But “just do it” isn’t always particularly helpful advice.

If you force yourself into an overwhelming situation while thinking:

• “This is going to be terrible.”
• “I can’t cope.”
• “I need to get out.”

and spend the entire time monitoring your anxiety and desperately waiting for it to end, you may come away thinking: “That was awful. I was right to be frightened.

The aim isn’t simply to endure as much anxiety as possible. If you’re spending the whole experience expecting disaster, monitoring your anxiety and desperately wanting to escape, it can inadvertently reinforce the unwanted pattern rather than change it.

It’s to help your mind and body learn something different:

• “I can handle this.”
• “I don’t need to escape.”
• “Feeling anxious doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”

As those patterns begin changing, confidence can start replacing avoidance.

 

How To Start Breaking the Anxiety and Avoidance Cycle

You don’t need to suddenly tackle everything you’ve been avoiding.

Small, consistent changes matter more.

 

1. Notice Where Anxiety Is Making Decisions

Start by becoming curious about the things you avoid.

Ask yourself: “Would I choose differently if I knew I wasn’t going to feel anxious?”

If the answer is yes, anxiety may be influencing the decision more than you realised.

 

2. Notice What You Do To Feel Safe

Look beyond obvious avoidance.

What do you believe you have to do in order to cope?

Perhaps you always need someone with you. Maybe you continually check how you’re feeling.  Perhaps you rehearse conversations, sit near exits or leave situations early.

You don’t need to immediately stop everything.

Simply recognising the pattern is a useful first step.

 

3. Learn How To Calm the Anxiety Response

It’s much easier to change avoidance when you also know how to influence the anxious thoughts and physical sensations driving it.

One positive thing about anxiety is that many of the thoughts, feelings and responses keeping it going are happening inside your own mind and body. That means they are things you can learn to influence and change.

Controlled breathing, relaxation, hypnosis and other anxiety-management techniques can help you feel calmer and more in control.

You can read more here:

Practical Ways to Calm Anxiety When It Feels Overwhelming

 

4. Start Reclaiming Things Gradually

Rather than thinking: “I have to conquer this.”

ask: “What’s one manageable thing anxiety has been stopping me doing?”

The aim isn’t to overwhelm yourself.

It’s to start building experiences that show you that you can cope, while learning how to respond differently to the anxiety.

Set the first, smallest, step and work towards it. once that is achieved, set the next smallest step.

As confidence grows, the boundaries anxiety created can gradually move outwards again.

 

What I Notice With Anxiety Clients

Some of the most important changes clients tell me about can sound remarkably ordinary.

• “I drove there on my own.”
• “I went out with my friends.”
• “I spoke in the meeting.”
• “I went shopping and didn’t think about where the exit was.”
• “I booked the holiday.”

Yet when anxiety has been restricting someone’s life for months or years, those ordinary things can represent enormous progress.

Over time, these things just become normal again.

The goal isn’t simply to feel less anxious while continuing to live within the same restrictions.

It’s to become calmer and more confident and get back to doing the things that matter to you.

You can read more real client experiences here: Hypnotherapy Reviews in Ely

 

The Good News

If anxiety has gradually made your world smaller, it doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

Avoidance is learned because it brings relief. But you can also learn that you’re capable of handling situations you previously feared.

As your anxiety becomes calmer and your confidence grows, the need to avoid usually begins reducing. You start making decisions based on what you actually want rather than what will keep anxiety quiet.

• You say yes to things.
• You go places without constantly thinking about how you’ll get out.
• You speak without rehearsing every sentence.
• You stop continually asking yourself whether you’ll cope.

And gradually your world starts opening up again.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Anxiety and Avoidance

Does avoiding things make anxiety worse?

Avoidance can reduce anxiety immediately, which is why it feels so helpful. However, repeatedly avoiding safe situations can reinforce the belief that those situations are threatening or that you won’t be able to cope with them. This can make anxiety more likely to return in the future.

Why do I keep avoiding things because of anxiety?

Your brain naturally wants to move away from things it perceives as threatening. If avoiding something previously reduced your anxiety, avoidance can become an increasingly automatic response whenever you anticipate feeling that way again. It brings you immediate, short term relief from the anxiety (although the same pattern continues unchanged).

Is avoiding something always bad?

No. There are plenty of sensible reasons to avoid genuinely dangerous, harmful or simply unwanted situations. The issue is when anxiety repeatedly stops you doing safe things that you actually want or need to do.

A useful question is: “Would I still make this decision if anxiety wasn’t part of it?”

It’s about learning whether you are deciding just because you don’t want to do it, or whether anxiety is deciding for you.

What are safety behaviours in anxiety?

Safety behaviours are things you believe you need to do to try to prevent something bad happening or to help you cope with anxiety. Examples can include always sitting near an exit, needing someone with you, continually checking symptoms, excessive preparation or repeatedly seeking reassurance.

Should I force myself to face everything I’m avoiding?

Not necessarily. The aim isn’t to overwhelm yourself or prove that you can endure huge amounts of anxiety. That can lead to increased discomfort without change. It can be more useful to learn how to respond differently to anxiety while gradually rebuilding confidence through manageable experiences.

Why do I still feel anxious even when I face my fears?

Simply entering a feared situation doesn’t automatically change every anxiety pattern. You may still be monitoring yourself, predicting disaster, using safety behaviours or desperately waiting to escape. Lasting improvement involves changing how you respond to the anxious thoughts and sensations as well as gradually changing avoidance. When you first start doing something you’ve previously avoided, you may still experience some anticipatory anxiety. With repeated manageable experiences and a different response to those thoughts and feelings, you can begin discovering that you are able to cope and do the things you want or need to do.

Can hypnotherapy help with anxiety and avoidance?

Hypnotherapy can help you become calmer, change habitual anxious responses and build confidence in situations you’ve previously avoided. As the underlying anxiety becomes less intense, you can start feeling more able to do things without continually battling fear or organising your life around avoiding it.

 

Anxiety and Avoidance Support in Ely and Newmarket

If you look back over your last few months and realise anxiety has gradually started deciding where you go, what you do or what you avoid, this is a pattern that can be changed.

It’s something I regularly help people with through my anxiety therapy and hypnotherapy work in Ely, Newmarket and online.

The aim isn’t to force you to do things you don’t want to do.

It’s to help you become calmer and more confident so that you get to make those decisions rather than anxiety making them for you.

You can learn more here:

• Anxiety Support Hub
• Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely
• Hypnotherapy Reviews in Ely

Or arrange a free initial consultation to discuss what’s been happening and what might help.

To your health and happiness,

Dan Regan

Anxiety Therapy and Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket