Over the last two weeks, you…
- Learned what anxiety is. Remember, anxiety is a normal emotion everyone has to keep us safe. LUNA will help you feel less anxiety in situations that are not dangerous.
- Learned about the three parts of anxiety- including the physical part (for example, heart beating fast or sweating), anxious thoughts (expecting bad things to happen), and behavior (avoiding situations that make you afraid).
- You also set your own goals for the program and rewards for achieving those goals!
This week you will learn more about avoidance and why avoiding things that make you anxious will not help you overcome your anxiety. You will also learn about behaviors that we call “fix its" which can also get in the way of you overcoming your fears.
The Behavior Aspect of the CBT Triangle- The Avoidance Cycle
Last week, you learned how to identify anxiety and other emotions by noticing how your body feels and by paying attention to your thoughts and behaviors. When we are anxious, we have more control over our behaviors and what we choose to do compared to our feelings or thoughts. Because of this, it may be helpful for us to focus a little more on the connection between your anxiety and your behaviors.
Usually, when we are anxious about something, it is natural for us to avoid it, but avoidance may not always help us in the long run. Sometimes, avoidance can lead us into a cycle that makes our anxiety worse over time.
Watch the video below to learn more about the avoidance cycle.
Sometimes when we encounter challenging situations, it's easier to avoid them than to face them. Some difficult emotions–like anxiety, fear, or worry–stick around or get worse because of this. It's natural to avoid things that challenge us. Sally's new best friend Bethany asks Sally if she wants to go to space club after school. Sally loves space and planets, but this would disrupt her normal routine of going home right after school, changing her clothes, and watching videos about space. This makes her feel anxious and she wants to avoid changing her routine, so she decides not to go. It makes her feel a little better at first knowing she can do her normal routine. But she's also disappointed that she didn't hang out with Bethany. Sally's avoidance does not help her overcome her anxiety. In fact, Sally ends up doubting her ability to handle any future changes in her routine. Let's look at Sally's avoidance cycle to see how this happens. The cycle is triggered by Bethany's invitation to go to space club after school. Because of this, Sally starts worrying about the possibility of changing her routine. This thought makes Sally anxious. Because of her anxiety, Sally avoids changing her routine to hang out with Bethany. Avoidance makes Sally feel better at first. But Sally never learns that she can handle changing her routine to do the thing she wants to do. Neil sees the new kid at school, Jerry, reading a book about planets and wants to talk to him. Neil always wants to connect with people who are interested in planets, but he is anxious he won't know what to say or will act awkwardly, so he avoids talking to Jerry. It makes him feel better at first knowing that he will not embarrass himself, but it also makes him sad that he didn't get to become friends with Jerry. Neil didn't get the chance to learn that talking to new people can be exciting and rewarding, and not as scary as it seems. He also didn't get to learn that he has the ability to socialize and make friends if he reaches out to others. Let's take a look at this cycle to see how avoidance makes Neil's anxiety worse over time. The cycle starts with Neil's interest in becoming friends with Jerry. Neil starts to think that he will embarrass himself if he talks to Jerry. This thought makes him anxious. So, Neil avoids talking to Jerry. This makes Neil less anxious at first. But he never gets to learn that he can face his fear of embarrassment in order to make new friends. Sally has a big spelling test coming up, and she's scared she's going to fail the test. This makes her nervous, so nervous that she procrastinates studying for her test by drawing comics for hours. But because she's not studying, she worries again that she's going to fail the test, and the cycle continues. If Sally had tried to study, she could have learned that even though studying is hard and makes her feel anxious she can handle it! Plus, she would have felt prepared for the test! Let's see how Sally's avoidance stops her from overcoming her anxiety. First, Sally encounters a trigger – remembering that the spelling test is just a few days away. Sally starts worrying that she will fail the test. This thought makes Sally anxious. Sally avoids studying so that she does not have to face her anxiety about the test. This makes her feel better at first. But when Sally is forced to think about the test again, she feels even more anxious. It's natural to avoid things that are hard for us, but we will work on overcoming this cycle!
As you can see, it is important to work on overcoming our avoidance cycles by recognizing and changing the ways we behave when we are anxious. This is exactly what we will be focusing on in the LUNA program.
When we avoid our anxieties over and over again, we are not able to learn anything new about them. This can make our fears stronger overtime. Avoiding our fears and worries means we don’t get the chance to see that what we are afraid of might not really happen. We also don’t get to see that even if something bad does happen, everything might still be okay!
To get more familiar with avoidance, take a look at the list of common avoidance behaviors below, or view the PDF version.
Common Avoidance Behaviors:
- Not talking or interacting with others
- Canceling plans with others or missing events
- Procrastinating on things you need to do like assignments or chores because of anxiety
- Refusing to do things or put yourself in certain situations because of anxiety
- Isolating yourself by staying in your room or by not leaving the house
- Distracting yourself from things that make you anxious
Then, take a look at some more Avoidance Cycle examples!