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Hello, and welcome to Understanding Anxiety with Neil Robson the podcast.
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I'm Neil Robson, a hypnotherapist at favershim Hypnotherapy, where I
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work with people both online and hearing Kent to help
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them overcome anxiety, panic attacks, and overthinking all sorts of anxiety.
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So today I'd like to talk about something that feels
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completely natural when you're anxious, and in fact it feels
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like common sense. Really, it's something almost every one of
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us would do, and yet it's one of the biggest
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reasons anxiety can quietly grow over time. And today we're
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going to be talking about avoidance. So let me introduce
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you to Sarah. Sarah has her first panic attack whilst
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shopping in a supermarket. Now it comes out of no way.
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Her heart races, she feels dizzy, her breathing becomes shallow,
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and she genuinely believes she's about to collapse. Eventually, she
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gets help. She gets outside, she sits in her car
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and slowly the panic begins to settle. She feels well
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enough to drive, so she drives home and she has
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this one overwhelming thought, I never want to feel like
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that again. So a week later, she needs to go
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shopping again. Now, without really thinking about it, she chooses
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the smaller shop instead of the big supermarket. It feels safer,
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nothing bad happens. Her brain breathes a sigh of relief.
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Good decision, it tells itself. A few weeks later, she's
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invited into the town center and she makes an excuse
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it's too busy, and again she feels this relief. A
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few months pass and now she only shops locally. She
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avoids crowds, she avoids cues, she avoids anywhere she thinks
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she might feel trapped. Her world has shrinked. Not because
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she's weak, not because she's lazy in any way, not
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because she's choosing anxiety. She's simply doing what every human
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brain has evolved to do, avoid danger. Now the problem
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is her brain has made a mistake. It is an
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avoiding danger, it's avoiding discomfort. And those are two very
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different things. See when our ancestors avoided a hungry lion,
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avoidance kept them alive. The brain learnt that place is dangerous,
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avoid it again. Fine, perfect, And that's exactly how survival works.
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But anxiety changes the rules. So instead of learning from
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genuine danger, it starts learning from anxious feelings. If you
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leave the supermarket, every time you feel anxious, your brain
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doesn't think, oh, anxiety is passed now. It thinks leaving
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saved us. And that's a powerful lesson. Next time you
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walk towards a supermarket, what do you think your brain
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is going to remind you of or remember? It's going
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to be danger not because supermarkets are dangerous, because your
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previous escape appeared to keep you safe. And this is
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a thing. That's how the avoidance cycle begins. It's incredibly logical.
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You feel anxious, you leave, you feel relief. Your brain
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joins the dots, so leaving equal safety. So next time
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it encourages you to leave even sooner than sooner. Still,
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and eventually the anxiety starts before you've even left the house,
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and not because the world has become more dangerous in
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any way, but because your brain has become more protective.
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So one of the biggest misunderstandings about anxiety is that
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people think avoidance proves something. If I couldn't stay there,
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it must have been too much for me. Well, actually
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the opposite is often true. Avoidance doesn't prove something was dangerous.
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It simply proves that leaving reduced your anxiety in that moment,
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and your brain it's always paying attention to what reduces
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anxiety because it believes it's obviously it's helping you. And
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the really difficult part is this avoidance actually works, at
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least for a little while. The moment you decide not
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to go, you feel better. The moment you counsel some plans,
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you relax, and the moment you drive home instead of
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carrying on your heart says down that relief. But just
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like we talked about in the last episode with reassurance,
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short term relief can create a long term problem. Every
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time avoidance reduces anxiety, it teaches your brain that one
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lesson you escaped, didn't you just in time? When the
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brain never gets the chance to discover what would have
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happened if you'd stayed, And that means it never learns
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the most important lesson of all, that you were actually
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capable of doing it in the first place. Now, the
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interesting thing about avoidance is that it rarely stays in
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one area of your life. It has a habit of spreading.
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Let's go back to Sarah for a moment. At first,
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it was just one supermarket, Then it became all supermarkets,
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then busy shopping centers, then anywhere with long queues, and
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eventually she started avoiding places that she'd always enjoyed going to,
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not because the places have changed, but because her brain
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had quietly added them to its list of possible dangers.
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And this is how anxiety slowly shrinks people's world. Doesn't
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usually happen overnight. It happens one small decision at a time.
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I'll go another day, I'll stay at home tonight, I'll
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let someone else drive, I'll order online instead. It's easier
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and safer. Each decision makes perfect sense in the moment,
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and each one brings that familiar feeling of relief and safety.
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And that's why avoidance is such a powerful thing, Because
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it works. It removes the anxiety, or at least it
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feels as if it does. But what's actually disappeared here?
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Has the danger gone? Or has the opportunity to prove
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yourself wrong disappeared as well? That's a very different question.
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Avoidance is limited to places. Sometimes we avoid conversations. Perhaps
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you've been meaning to make an important phone call. You
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put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow comes next week, the
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anxiety grows, the phone call becomes an even bigger amountain
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to time. Sometimes we can avoid people. Someone invites us out,
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we say we're busy, not because we don't want to
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see them, but because we're worried. We're going to feel anxious.
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Perhaps we'll have a panic attack, perhaps we'll embarrass ourselves,
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so we stay at home. Again, the anxiety settles, the
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brain says, well done, good decision that was. But the
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next invitation feels even harder, and some people begin avoiding
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exercise because it makes their heartbeat faster. Others avoid traveling
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too far from home. Some avoid motorways, Others avoid lifts
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or trains or airplanes. Some people stop eating in restaurants
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because they're frightened full trapped. Others avoid speaking up in
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meetings because they're afraid they're going to say something wrong.
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And although these situations are completely different, the brain is
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doing exactly the same thing every time. It's trying to
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keep you safe. The trouble is it's become overprotective. Imagine
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you had an over protective friend and every time you
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wanted to do something new, they said, don't go, something
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might happen. You'd be safe as staying here, and eventually
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you probably stopped doing quite a lot, not because you
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wanted to, because someone kept convincing you that the risk
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was too great. And that's what an anxious brain can become,
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an over protective friend, always trying to help, always trying
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to prevent this discomfort with anxiety. The irony is that
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by trying to so hard to protect you, it stops
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you discovering how capable you really are. And there's another
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important point here. Avoidance doesn't just apply to situations. Sometimes
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we avoid feelings. We can distract ourselves all the time,
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keep the television on, we scroll through our phones, we
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stay busy every minute of the day. Not because any
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of those things are bad, but because silence gives anxiety
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room to speak. Sometimes we avoid memories, We can avoid thoughts.
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Sometimes wen avoid noticing how we're actually feeling. And again,
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you know, it all makes sense. Something it feels uncomfortable.
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You know, why wouldn't we want to get away from it?
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But because every time we run from anxiety, the anxiety
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starts believing it must be something worth running from. Imagine
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meeting a harmless dog every morning, and every time you
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see it you cross the road, and after a while,
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your brain begins to assume there must be a reason
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for this. If I always avoid the dog, perhaps it
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is really dangerous. Nothing about the dog's changed, only your
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behavior has. And behavior is one of the ways the
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brain decides what's safe and what isn't. And this is
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why recovery from anxiety often feels a little bit confusing.
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People can say I've been avoiding these situations because they
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make me anxious, but often they continue to make them
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anxious because they've been avoided. See what I mean. That's
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a difficult idea to accept at first, but it's hopeful
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as well, because if avoidance help teach the brain to
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be afraid, new experiences can teach it something completely different.
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So what can we do about it? If avoidance is
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keeping anxiety alive, then the first thing I'd say is
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recover If he isn't about forcing yourself into the most
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frightening situation that you can imagine, all right, it's not
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about proving how brave you are, and it certainly isn't
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about pretending you you're not anxious. Recovery is about giving
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your brain new experiences so we can learn. Let's go
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about to Sarah one last time. Imagine she decides she's
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never going back to the supermarket five years pass. What
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does her brain believe? Now? It believes supermarkets must be
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incredibly dangerous. After all, she's avoided them for five years, right,
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so from the brain's point of view, that must mean
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the danger is real. Now imagine something different. Sarah decides
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to drive to the supermarket. She doesn't even go inside.
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She simply parks outside for five minutes. Her anxiety rises.
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Her brain is saying, you know, screaming, let's go home,
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but she stays. Nothing terrible happens. The anxiety begins to settle.
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So a few days later she goes back. This time,
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she walks through the entrance again, her anxiety rises again,
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nothing terrible happens. Next week, she buys one item, then
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she leaves. Slowly, something remarkable begins to happen. Her brain
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starts collecting new evidence. Not evidence that anxiety disappears, but
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evidence that she can cope with the anxiety. And that's
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a huge difference. Many people think recovery means never feeling
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anxious again, and I don't think that's the right goal here.
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The goal is to stop being frightened of anxiety itself.
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Because once you're no longer afraid of the feeling, it
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loses a lot of its power. Your brain starts to
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realize this feeling is comfortable, but it isn't dangerous. My
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life's not in danger here. That lesson can't usually be
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learnt by thinking, It has to be learnt by experience.
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And every time you stay a little longer than your
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anxiety wanted you to, you're teaching your brains. You every
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time you make the phone call instead of putting it off,
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You're teaching your brain every time you're accepting invitation instead
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of counseling. You're teaching your brain every time you do
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that drive, that go onto that one junction further, walk
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a little further, stand the cue a little longer, or
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allow yourself to feel anxious without immediately escaping. You're giving
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your nervous system the opportunity to update its information. To
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think back to when you first learned to drive. At
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the beginning, every roundabout felt complicated, every gear change needed
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conscious thought, every journey you felt stressful. But after enough repetition,
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your brain stopped treating driving as something dangerous or unfamiliar,
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and it became normal. An Anxiety recovery works in much
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the same way the brain learns through experience, not once,
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not twice, but over time, repetition. This is why I
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always encourage people to celebrate progress rather than trying to
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get that perfection. Small shifts. Perhaps today you've stayed in
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the supermarket for two minutes longer than last week. That's progress.
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Perhaps you answered that thing instead of letting it ring.
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That's progress. Perhaps you went out for a coffee even
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though you felt anxious, that's progress. Recovery is rarely this
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massive giant leap as usue all these hundreds of tiny,
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little victories that gradually changed the way your brain sees
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the world. And there's something I'd like you to really remember.
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Feeling anxious doesn't mean you're failing. Very often, it means
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you're doing something that gives your brain the chance to learn.
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The anxiety isn't proof that you're getting worse, and that's important.
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Sometimes it's proof that you're challenging that old pattern. So,
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as we finished the day, I'd like to leave you
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one question. Where has anxiety persuaded you to make your
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world smaller? And what's one small step you could take
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this week to gently begin making it bigger again? Not
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the biggest step, not the scariest step, just the next step,
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because that's how your confidence grows, not all at once,
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but one experience at a time. So thank you for
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listening to me today, Wafflon. Hope you so this help
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you understand why avoidance feels so helpful in the moment,
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but quietly it allows anxiety to get stronger over time.
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So for more practical help, listen and follow to Understanding
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Anxiety with Neil Robson podcast And if you'd like one
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to unsupport, I work with Clrents online and from my
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practice at Fabsham Hypotherapy and Kent and you can just
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check the website out. So until next time, stay well,
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Hello, and welcome to Understanding Anxiety with Neil Robson the podcast.
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I'm Neil Robson, a hypnotherapist at favershim Hypnotherapy, where I
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work with people both online and hearing Kent to help
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them overcome anxiety, panic attacks, and overthinking all sorts of anxiety.
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So today I'd like to talk about something that feels
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completely natural when you're anxious, and in fact it feels
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like common sense. Really, it's something almost every one of
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us would do, and yet it's one of the biggest
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reasons anxiety can quietly grow over time. And today we're
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going to be talking about avoidance. So let me introduce
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you to Sarah. Sarah has her first panic attack whilst
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shopping in a supermarket. Now it comes out of no way.
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Her heart races, she feels dizzy, her breathing becomes shallow,
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and she genuinely believes she's about to collapse. Eventually, she
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gets help. She gets outside, she sits in her car
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and slowly the panic begins to settle. She feels well
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enough to drive, so she drives home and she has
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this one overwhelming thought, I never want to feel like
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that again. So a week later, she needs to go
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shopping again. Now, without really thinking about it, she chooses
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the smaller shop instead of the big supermarket. It feels safer,
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nothing bad happens. Her brain breathes a sigh of relief.
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Good decision, it tells itself. A few weeks later, she's
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invited into the town center and she makes an excuse
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it's too busy, and again she feels this relief. A
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few months pass and now she only shops locally. She
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avoids crowds, she avoids cues, she avoids anywhere she thinks
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she might feel trapped. Her world has shrinked. Not because
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she's weak, not because she's lazy in any way, not
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because she's choosing anxiety. She's simply doing what every human
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brain has evolved to do, avoid danger. Now the problem
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is her brain has made a mistake. It is an
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avoiding danger, it's avoiding discomfort. And those are two very
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different things. See when our ancestors avoided a hungry lion,
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avoidance kept them alive. The brain learnt that place is dangerous,
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avoid it again. Fine, perfect, And that's exactly how survival works.
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But anxiety changes the rules. So instead of learning from
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genuine danger, it starts learning from anxious feelings. If you
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leave the supermarket, every time you feel anxious, your brain
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doesn't think, oh, anxiety is passed now. It thinks leaving
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saved us. And that's a powerful lesson. Next time you
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walk towards a supermarket, what do you think your brain
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is going to remind you of or remember? It's going
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to be danger not because supermarkets are dangerous, because your
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previous escape appeared to keep you safe. And this is
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a thing. That's how the avoidance cycle begins. It's incredibly logical.
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You feel anxious, you leave, you feel relief. Your brain
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joins the dots, so leaving equal safety. So next time
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it encourages you to leave even sooner than sooner. Still,
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and eventually the anxiety starts before you've even left the house,
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and not because the world has become more dangerous in
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any way, but because your brain has become more protective.
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So one of the biggest misunderstandings about anxiety is that
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people think avoidance proves something. If I couldn't stay there,
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it must have been too much for me. Well, actually
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the opposite is often true. Avoidance doesn't prove something was dangerous.
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It simply proves that leaving reduced your anxiety in that moment,
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and your brain it's always paying attention to what reduces
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anxiety because it believes it's obviously it's helping you. And
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the really difficult part is this avoidance actually works, at
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least for a little while. The moment you decide not
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to go, you feel better. The moment you counsel some plans,
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you relax, and the moment you drive home instead of
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carrying on your heart says down that relief. But just
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like we talked about in the last episode with reassurance,
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short term relief can create a long term problem. Every
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time avoidance reduces anxiety, it teaches your brain that one
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lesson you escaped, didn't you just in time? When the
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brain never gets the chance to discover what would have
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happened if you'd stayed, And that means it never learns
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the most important lesson of all, that you were actually
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capable of doing it in the first place. Now, the
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interesting thing about avoidance is that it rarely stays in
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one area of your life. It has a habit of spreading.
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Let's go back to Sarah for a moment. At first,
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it was just one supermarket, Then it became all supermarkets,
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then busy shopping centers, then anywhere with long queues, and
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eventually she started avoiding places that she'd always enjoyed going to,
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not because the places have changed, but because her brain
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had quietly added them to its list of possible dangers.
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And this is how anxiety slowly shrinks people's world. Doesn't
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usually happen overnight. It happens one small decision at a time.
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I'll go another day, I'll stay at home tonight, I'll
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let someone else drive, I'll order online instead. It's easier
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and safer. Each decision makes perfect sense in the moment,
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and each one brings that familiar feeling of relief and safety.
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And that's why avoidance is such a powerful thing, Because
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it works. It removes the anxiety, or at least it
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feels as if it does. But what's actually disappeared here?
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Has the danger gone? Or has the opportunity to prove
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yourself wrong disappeared as well? That's a very different question.
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Avoidance is limited to places. Sometimes we avoid conversations. Perhaps
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you've been meaning to make an important phone call. You
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put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow comes next week, the
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anxiety grows, the phone call becomes an even bigger amountain
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to time. Sometimes we can avoid people. Someone invites us out,
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we say we're busy, not because we don't want to
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see them, but because we're worried. We're going to feel anxious.
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Perhaps we'll have a panic attack, perhaps we'll embarrass ourselves,
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so we stay at home. Again, the anxiety settles, the
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brain says, well done, good decision that was. But the
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next invitation feels even harder, and some people begin avoiding
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exercise because it makes their heartbeat faster. Others avoid traveling
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too far from home. Some avoid motorways, Others avoid lifts
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or trains or airplanes. Some people stop eating in restaurants
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because they're frightened full trapped. Others avoid speaking up in
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meetings because they're afraid they're going to say something wrong.
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And although these situations are completely different, the brain is
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doing exactly the same thing every time. It's trying to
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keep you safe. The trouble is it's become overprotective. Imagine
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you had an over protective friend and every time you
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wanted to do something new, they said, don't go, something
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might happen. You'd be safe as staying here, and eventually
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you probably stopped doing quite a lot, not because you
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wanted to, because someone kept convincing you that the risk
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was too great. And that's what an anxious brain can become,
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an over protective friend, always trying to help, always trying
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to prevent this discomfort with anxiety. The irony is that
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by trying to so hard to protect you, it stops
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you discovering how capable you really are. And there's another
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important point here. Avoidance doesn't just apply to situations. Sometimes
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we avoid feelings. We can distract ourselves all the time,
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keep the television on, we scroll through our phones, we
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stay busy every minute of the day. Not because any
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of those things are bad, but because silence gives anxiety
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room to speak. Sometimes we avoid memories, We can avoid thoughts.
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Sometimes wen avoid noticing how we're actually feeling. And again,
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you know, it all makes sense. Something it feels uncomfortable.
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You know, why wouldn't we want to get away from it?
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But because every time we run from anxiety, the anxiety
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starts believing it must be something worth running from. Imagine
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meeting a harmless dog every morning, and every time you
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see it you cross the road, and after a while,
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your brain begins to assume there must be a reason
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for this. If I always avoid the dog, perhaps it
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is really dangerous. Nothing about the dog's changed, only your
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behavior has. And behavior is one of the ways the
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brain decides what's safe and what isn't. And this is
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why recovery from anxiety often feels a little bit confusing.
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People can say I've been avoiding these situations because they
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make me anxious, but often they continue to make them
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anxious because they've been avoided. See what I mean. That's
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a difficult idea to accept at first, but it's hopeful
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as well, because if avoidance help teach the brain to
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be afraid, new experiences can teach it something completely different.
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So what can we do about it? If avoidance is
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keeping anxiety alive, then the first thing I'd say is
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recover If he isn't about forcing yourself into the most
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frightening situation that you can imagine, all right, it's not
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about proving how brave you are, and it certainly isn't
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about pretending you you're not anxious. Recovery is about giving
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your brain new experiences so we can learn. Let's go
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about to Sarah one last time. Imagine she decides she's
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never going back to the supermarket five years pass. What
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does her brain believe? Now? It believes supermarkets must be
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incredibly dangerous. After all, she's avoided them for five years, right,
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so from the brain's point of view, that must mean
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the danger is real. Now imagine something different. Sarah decides
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to drive to the supermarket. She doesn't even go inside.
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She simply parks outside for five minutes. Her anxiety rises.
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Her brain is saying, you know, screaming, let's go home,
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but she stays. Nothing terrible happens. The anxiety begins to settle.
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So a few days later she goes back. This time,
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she walks through the entrance again, her anxiety rises again,
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nothing terrible happens. Next week, she buys one item, then
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she leaves. Slowly, something remarkable begins to happen. Her brain
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starts collecting new evidence. Not evidence that anxiety disappears, but
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evidence that she can cope with the anxiety. And that's
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a huge difference. Many people think recovery means never feeling
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anxious again, and I don't think that's the right goal here.
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The goal is to stop being frightened of anxiety itself.
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Because once you're no longer afraid of the feeling, it
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loses a lot of its power. Your brain starts to
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realize this feeling is comfortable, but it isn't dangerous. My
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life's not in danger here. That lesson can't usually be
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learnt by thinking, It has to be learnt by experience.
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And every time you stay a little longer than your
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anxiety wanted you to, you're teaching your brains. You every
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time you make the phone call instead of putting it off,
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You're teaching your brain every time you're accepting invitation instead
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of counseling. You're teaching your brain every time you do
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that drive, that go onto that one junction further, walk
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a little further, stand the cue a little longer, or
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allow yourself to feel anxious without immediately escaping. You're giving
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your nervous system the opportunity to update its information. To
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think back to when you first learned to drive. At
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the beginning, every roundabout felt complicated, every gear change needed
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conscious thought, every journey you felt stressful. But after enough repetition,
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your brain stopped treating driving as something dangerous or unfamiliar,
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and it became normal. An Anxiety recovery works in much
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the same way the brain learns through experience, not once,
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not twice, but over time, repetition. This is why I
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always encourage people to celebrate progress rather than trying to
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get that perfection. Small shifts. Perhaps today you've stayed in
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the supermarket for two minutes longer than last week. That's progress.
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Perhaps you answered that thing instead of letting it ring.
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That's progress. Perhaps you went out for a coffee even
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though you felt anxious, that's progress. Recovery is rarely this
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massive giant leap as usue all these hundreds of tiny,
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little victories that gradually changed the way your brain sees
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the world. And there's something I'd like you to really remember.
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Feeling anxious doesn't mean you're failing. Very often, it means
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you're doing something that gives your brain the chance to learn.
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The anxiety isn't proof that you're getting worse, and that's important.
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Sometimes it's proof that you're challenging that old pattern. So,
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as we finished the day, I'd like to leave you
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one question. Where has anxiety persuaded you to make your
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world smaller? And what's one small step you could take
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this week to gently begin making it bigger again? Not
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the biggest step, not the scariest step, just the next step,
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because that's how your confidence grows, not all at once,
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but one experience at a time. So thank you for
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listening to me today, Wafflon. Hope you so this help
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you understand why avoidance feels so helpful in the moment,
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but quietly it allows anxiety to get stronger over time.
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So for more practical help, listen and follow to Understanding
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Anxiety with Neil Robson podcast And if you'd like one
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00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.679
to unsupport, I work with Clrents online and from my
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practice at Fabsham Hypotherapy and Kent and you can just
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check the website out. So until next time, stay well,
