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Exercise: Adaptive Avoidance and Problematic Avoidance

In the two columns below list in the left-hand column situations that you avoided where the avoidance was adaptive for you. In the right-hand column, list situations where your avoidance was problematic.

Avoidance can also be a problem when the very process of avoiding creates additional unpleasant feelings and experiences. This is a subtle process that is easy to experience directly with a thought experiment. For the next ten to fifteen seconds, do everything you can do to avoid imagining a pink bear. Whatever you think about, don’t think about or visualize a pink bear. Try this for ten to fifteen seconds and then continue reading.

How did it work? If you’re like most of us, your attempt to avoid thinking about pink bears resulted in the exact opposite: You actually spent most of the time visualizing or thinking about some sort of pink bear! It’s as if the thought, “I shouldn’t think about pink bears,” kept reintroducing pink bears into your mind. It works the same way with avoidance of difficult experiences when you’re depressed. The more effort you put into avoiding-for example, not dealing with an important piece of paperwork-the more you will worry about the paperwork.

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How Do You Know If Your Behavior Is Avoidance?

Take a look back at the definition of avoidance that we provided earlier. A voidance behavior occurs when (a) what you are doing helps you to temporarily escape from difficult situations or feelings, and (b) what you are doing fails to improve or it even worsens your depression in the long run. Now that you have had experience with activity charts and self monitoring, you can monitor your own avoidance behaviors. To determine whether your behavior is avoidance or not, you need to look at all aspects of a situation. A behavior that is helpful in one context may be an avoidance behavior in a different context. Recall the example of Leslie setting out to clean the dishes and do laundry and ending up knitting sweaters. If, before a birthday or holiday, Leslie had set out to knit sweaters as gifts for her children, the knitting would be completely appropriate. However, in the context of needing to get housework completed, knitting was a distraction and avoidance of the discomfort of the task at hand.

The function of a behavior is also determined by its consequences. This is a fancy way of saying that behavior does not always serve the purpose that you think it does. For example, eating a piece of chocolate cake can serve many functions, depending on the situation and the consequences. If Andy, sitting at home after eating a light meal, thinks that he’d like a little taste of something sweet, and he eats a piece of chocolate cake, eating the cake functions as a nice treat that reduces his desire for a sweet. Imagine that, in a different situation, Andy is feeling badly about himself and has just eaten a large meal. He cuts himself a piece of chocolate cake out of boredom, eats it, and continues to feel dissatisfied. He also feels a little queasy. The act of eating the cake has served a very different function from the first instance. It has helped Andy to avoid boredom and has also made him feel physically ill and a little more depressed. In a different situation, Andy may be visiting a friend who offers him a piece of chocolate cake. He accepts and the two of them eat cake and drink a cup of coffee while having an interesting conversation. When he has finished eating the cake, he feels happy and connected to his friend. Eating the cake in this situation has helped to promote social interaction for Andy.