How Your Mind is Making You Sicker (And What to do About it)
As humans, we are designed to move towards things that are pleasant and move away from things that are unpleasant. This skill is fantastic, especially when we are dealing with things in the external world. Your mind helps you quickly move your hand away from a hot stove and keeps you from getting hit by an oncoming bus.
We tend to apply the same rule to our internal world (our thoughts and emotions). We run away from pain and discomfort and run towards happiness and comfort.
It makes sense that we would do this. However, when we apply this rule to our internal experiences, we can run into problems.
Think about times in your life that you are proud of, like when you gave birth or changed your career. Now think about some of the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that were involved in those moments. Not all of them were pleasant. When we move towards things that are really important, we usually have to deal with uncomfortable emotions or negative thoughts. So our minds tell us to move away, just as if we had touched a hot stove or saw an oncoming bus.
The more we try to avoid stressful thoughts and emotions, the more persuasive and potent they become. Avoiding pain tends to make the pain more significant, not less. A paradoxical effect follows, where we actually increase our psychological pain. Because our minds get a bit of relief in the short term, the cycle of avoidance continues. We keep moving away from things that matter most to us. Essentially, we train ourselves to become Master Avoiders.
This is called Experiential Avoidance.
In a nutshell, experiential avoidance is a coping mechanism that is used to rid ourselves of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. When used excessively, our lives can become more about eliminating discomfort than about family, friends, love, service, health or whatever else is important to us. It’s an exhausting trap that creates unnecessary suffering.
Examples of Experiential Avoidance
How do you know if you are a Master Avoider? When you are engaging in experiential avoidance, you might do some of these things:
Procrastination: “I’ll do that tomorrow.”
Withdrawal: “I don’t really like Uncle Pete asking about my wheelchair, so I’m going to skip that family function.”
Blame: “My illness makes me unhappy. My doctors make me unhappy. My illness is my mom’s fault.”
Black-and-White Thinking: “I don’t go to parties. It’s not my thing.”
Worrying/Ruminating: “Will illness take over my life? Will I ever get better? Will anyone help me? Will I be a burden to everyone?”
Predicting the Worst: “Nothing will ever work so why bother trying?”
Attachment to the Past or Future: “My life was so much better before I got sick. I wish I could go back in time.”
Over-Analyzing: “That doctor looked at me funny. The tone of his voice made me think he was uninterested. Why did he ask me that weird question about my mood?”
Self-Judgment: “I must be doing this wrong. I always get things wrong. That’s why I don’t have any friends.”
Catastrophizing: “My doctor wants to see me. It must be bad. I probably have cancer!”
Reason-Giving: “I didn’t make it to my appointment because my dog was looking a little under the weather and I didn’t want to leave her. Also, I wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t want to bring germs into the clinic. Also, I heard a storm was coming, and you know I don’t like driving in the rain.
Self-Loathing and Comparisons: “I always have something wrong with me. Every time something good happens something bad follows. Do I have terrible luck or is the universe out to get me?”
Rule-Following and Being Right: “That doctor didn’t give me any solutions! He didn’t know anything about lupus! He is a doctor!”
Generalizations: “I never get to go anywhere. My illness ALWAYS gets in the way.”
Distraction: “There’s laundry to fold but… I am going to scroll Facebook for a few minutes and then look at houses I can’t afford on Zillow.”
Perfectionism: “This project must be done perfectly, or I will probably get fired.”
Avoiding discomfort isn't always a problem. It’s a normal response we see in every kind of animal. Problems start to appear when you become so rigid in your thinking that you start to avoid important things in your life.
Consequences of Experiential Avoidance
The consequences of experiential avoidance are very damaging. While you’re waiting to feel good to go to the movies, spend time with friends, go on dates, and cook healthy meals, you’re developing a habit of avoiding unpleasant experiences. As time passes, your life focuses only on avoiding discomfort. When you use experiential avoidance excessively you might experience some of the following:
You feel worse - the unpleasant thoughts and feelings get stronger and more pervasive.
You feel bad about yourself because you keep avoiding the people and things that you value.
You feel stuck; your life (and your well-being) are not moving in positive directions.
You feel like you have no control, freedom, or power anymore.
Your problems got worse - that bill you didn’t pay, or that medication you didn’t take is now causing more significant issues.
You aren’t getting important things done.
You’re struggling to find healthy solutions to most of your problems.
Your quality-of-life continues to worsen.
Your health is worsening because you’re avoiding health-positive behaviors and you are not adapting to your condition.
Your chronic pain or physical symptoms are getting worse because chronic avoidance leads to decreased pain endurance and tolerance.
Ongoing attempts to minimize or avoid unpleasant sensation may also lead to coping patterns that include drug abuse, dependence, and addiction.
Experiential avoidance makes your symptoms and your life worse. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy was developed to address experiential avoidance and centers itself around accepting discomfort. ACT challenges the Western idea that healthy human functioning means being free from pain. ACT proposes that difficult thoughts and feelings are a normal part of being human, and the impulse to free ourselves of these distressing thoughts and feelings is normal too. But unlike many other types of psychotherapy, ACT doesn’t try to eliminate symptoms. Instead, ACT helps you reduce fight and concentrate on the things that are most important to you.
Would you like to work with an ACT therapist? Here is a searchable list to Find an ACT Therapist on the Association of Contextual and Behavioral Sciences (the ACT professional organization) website.
