Running Nowhere: Healing your avoidant behaviour

The development of cultural psychology is instrumental in uncovering the abstract universal laws of human behaviour, where elements such as meaning, goals, creativity, and culture are integrated into the central framework of emotional design. 

There is no such thing as an objective, value-free reality - one truth cannot encompass all backgrounds. It is therefore vital not to impose complexity through generalised theories, but instead to articulate one’s individuality down to the finest grain.

What this requires is something that many of us run from, a symptom of modern society and a culture we are all subscribed within - the avoidant archetype. 

The principle appears simple: the human mind is the source of knowledge, and every internal inquiry begins with the conquest of one’s own psyche. 

Yet the condition of the many is this - we rationalise the vicissitudes of the soul and seek unity through external agents. In doing so, we fail to meet the first-most demand of experience: to be present with our own personhood, in all its evolving phases. 

This is a process of endurance and radical honesty - to learn how to sit with the discomfort and disgust that have become part of the internal whip you’ve long been disciplined with. Until every layer of shame and dissociation is peeled from your coping mechanisms, and you can admit to the honesty in your unfiltered form. 

You don’t have to like what you see. That’s not the point. The point is to recognise the face you’ve forgotten. 

This amnesia is not accidental. It is a byproduct of self-repression - a progeny of the culture you were raised in, the generations that preceded you, the cognitive dysfunction of those tasked with your early development, the decisions you’ve made (both chosen and forced), and the ripple effects of everything that came before and everything that will follow.  

Beneath it all, when there is no nothing left to turn to or take, you stop running and begin to accept what makes you, you.  

And no - for my intuitive feelers who have turned the craft of avoidance into a mission of self-conquerment - this is not a project to recalibrate your imperfections. 

Because, you see, that too is just another form of avoidance. 

In this, you will not find an award to attain. No metaphor to struggle through. It is simply becoming and being. No audience to witness it. No eyes to validate it. Not even your own - because presence needs no permission. 

So how do we begin to understand our depth, to find cohesion in the conundrum of our thoughts? How do we stop avoiding the work that must be done? The kind no one can see but you will feel the labours of - every single day. 

First, you understand what avoidant behaviour looks like. This will manifest in its own unique way, but most likely, your relationship with yourself will be the defining arrangement. Consider how you respond to yourself in solitude.

Do you distract yourself instead of digesting? Do you intellectualise instead of feeling? Do you rehearse your life through productivity, aesthetic, or ambition because sitting still feels like surrender?

When you arrive at this point, it is critical to meet yourself with compassion and psychological flexibility. By adopting the process of cognitive defusion, you simply observe and enable the contents of your thoughts to flow. This will create a sympathetic distance between your behaviour and your self-concept.

You will begin to see that avoidant behaviour is not simply a choice - it is a maladaptive behavioural response to perceived threat. So far, these learned responses have led you to maintain your own anxiety disorders, nurtured through a cycle of shame, suppression and survival. 

Next is accepting that your intuition until now has been fraught with contradictions and the reason your gut could not guide you through situations is because it is uninformed. It is not that you lack instincts but with your focus dedicated to fleeing, it was unable to learn the skill of adjustment. New contexts did not contribute to an awareness framework, rather, old strategies employed continued to wound your power. 

When avoidance has been your conditioned norm, your nervous system learns to brace itself. The amygdala signals danger, activating the sympathetic nervous system. Adrenaline surges, cortisol floods the bloodstream, and without warning, you’re in fight-or-flight mode - except there’s nothing to flee from but yourself. 

So, you escape in quieter ways: in distraction, in overperformance, in perfectionism. And each time you do, your system registers safety not in presence, but in absence. 

Acceptance also means accepting that this felt good. Your avoidant behaviour wasn’t just survival - it was soothing. It served a function. It gave you relief, control, an illusion of safety. You escaped. You indulged. You numbed, and it worked - for a time. 

To deny the comfort of these strategies would be to dishonour the version of you that needed them. You must associate the goodness they once gave you, to fully understand why you held on so tightly.

Then, gently, you must grieve. Because the truth is this: the peace you seek now will not arrive through the shortcuts that once sustained you. It will come slowly, through the longer route. Through discomfort. Through presence. Through submission - not to pain, but to the process of re-entering your body, your truth, your life.

Here, grief is succumbing to weakness. But it is also the emergence of boundaries. Each time you take a counter-step, you are breaking a history of patterns. The struggle of leaving the gratification of familiarity will rehabilitate you. In your withdrawal, you will scream, relapse, repeat patterns and fail. But it is the contrary that you are achieving. In grief, you resolve and rebuild. 

This is the sacred necessity of healing, submitting to a mess only you can understand. You will have no choice but to abandon your inclination of performance because grief can not be justified as it shows up differently for everyone. Once you learn to do both, grieve and rebuild, you will achieve the skill of self-detoxification.

After the storm, the calm will return. Through consistent practice of interrupting compulsions and employing self-regulation techniques like grounding, breathwork, and somatic movement, your nervous system begins to rewire. The brain forms new associations between discomfort and safety, expanding your capacity to feel and experience without fleeing. 

Over time, the sympathetic nervous system - the body's natural rest-and-digest mode - reawakens, allowing you to experience calm and peace without the crutch of compulsive behaviour. This process is healing. This is integration.

Finally and for the exciting part, you get to expose yourself to a new life. Exposure is a core element of this therapy and must be repeated and prolonged without using avoidance strategies such as escape or safety behaviours. You cannot “I’m okay” yourself into presence. You must feel it - the unknown, the danger, and excitement in all its capacity. 

Now you can rewrite and introduce new values. You move toward experiences that fulfil not the version of you that coped, but the version of you that creates. One day, you will look back and realise: you existed as yourself. Rooms you once shrank in are now filled with your attendance. 

Or at the very least, you will have tried. And that’s all anyone can do. 

Image - Megan Fox, Jennifer's Body