How To Deal With Avoidance As An Over-thinker

Relatability

In the spirit of the topic of avoidance today, I will be avoiding writing on this whole topic due to feeling kinda weird about it. Thank you and see you next week! 

Isn’t this what avoidance looks like? Not doing or saying things with no explanation because the  topic is a little uncomfortable or weird? There’s such a close link of overthinking woven into avoidance too, by thinking about what you want to say or what’s wrong but not saying it outloud.

 Avoidance is truly living in your head and body while drowning in discomfort but saying nothing about it. It’s interesting because when I was really into avoiding things, I thought what I was doing was keeping the peace or that I was a really chill person by avoiding any type of discomfort. 

It turns out, when you do these things, all you’re doing is brewing resentment, not listening to what you need, and letting everything around you happen however it wants while not listening to what you want. 

After living with my avoidance for years,  I started thinking about the correlation between avoidance and how it was truly affecting my over-thinking and inner world. I could see it ruling my thoughts, which was ruling my beliefs about myself, which was ruling my actions. And very clearly, I could see it beginning to affect my outer world as well. 

Reflection:

To go a bit deeper, I noticed that my avoidance in relationships was becoming me being avoidant in life. I not only was being avoidant during conflict or being close with someone, but I was really noticing it in my actions as well. 

To me, avoidance meant ignoring something or pretending it wasn’t happening. As I was unconsciously practicing this personality trait, I was telling myself to ignore things I was thinking and I was pretending things I didn’t like in my life were also not there. 

When I got deep enough into doing this, I looked around and felt so much confusion. When our actions don’t line up with our thoughts it does create this inner turmoil that boils around until it explodes. For me, who I wanted to be aka my thoughts and my actions aka my avoidance were clashing big time. 

I would notice myself thinking so much about how much I wished I had healthy relationships, I wished I could be fit, I wished I could have my own business, or I wished I was traveling more but in the same breath I was taking no action to align with those thoughts. The thinking and overthinking were there, but the action is what was missing for me. 

Thoughts mean nothing without action. You can intend to have a conversation with someone, but if you don’t there’s no action. You can intend to change your communication style, but without effort it will be the same. You can intend to not walk away from a conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable, but if you don’t nothing changes. You can over-think about why life isn’t how you want it, but without action you won’t build anything. And this was truly my thought process, all intentions and thinking with no action. I was avoiding my life, and I was ready to unlearn my avoidant patterns.  

It’s interesting to learn what things really are when you start learning more about yourself. For example, what I saw and adopted as a personality trait was being really quiet, not being disruptive, and not having a ton of opinions on things. But what’s interesting is this is just a product of practicing avoidance. 

When I began to separate myself from this personality trait that wasn’t doing anything for me, I discovered I had more opinions and things I wanted to share than I thought, I did want to speak up about things that bothered me I was just afraid, and that facing things more head on allows me to move through the uncomfortable feelings quickly. 

Reinvention

Through my process of reflecting on my avoidance it has brought me to one true fact. Avoidance is prolonged suffering and expression of your thoughts and feelings are freedom. Even if they are not received well on another end, emotions can be expressed without it being wrong. 

Expression and communication is action. Intention and action and good intentions can never be wrong. Understanding what is you and what is a habit you’ve formed from a personality trait that isn’t for you anymore is the first step to separating from that trait. 

Unlearning avoidance is a process, and as you learn to speak up in discomfort, communicate fairly, and not run from the first sign of feeling weird your spiraly over-thinking decreases too. You don’t have to think about how guilty you feel for the unhealthy behaviors that accompany being avoidant, you don’t have to think about what you WISH you could be like because you took action, and you learn more about the purpose avoidance served for you so you can do things that are good for you. 

Things that happen around you are a force and can naturally affect you, but you are also a force and you have your own individual experience that has an opportunity to be released. Once you bring that uncomfortable feeling to light and out of the pit of your stomach, it’s released and you can find a solution that works for you instead of sitting with this terrible feeling of knowing something is wrong, but you don’t want to bring it up. 

I will also point out that doing something healthy for yourself, does not mean it will feel good and release automatically. Making a change is simply uncomfortable. Interesting enough, there’s no escaping discomfort with this situation. Either you avoid and sit in your own discomfort of knowing something is bugging you and keeping it to yourself, or you lean into a different, new type of discomfort and say something or ask for help. 

Avoidance truly is internal suffering, and freedom is in the action you can take to release it.