The price of being an Avoider

Today I’m talking about avoiders. Avoiders are those of us who sabotage ourselves by avoiding dealing with things. Often people with positive qualities like being easy going and even keeled, positive and non-judgmental of others when they overdo these qualities fall into avoider saboteur. 

You know that you have an avoider this rings true:

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  • Say yes to things to avoid conflict 

  • You procrastinate on unpleasant tasks

  • Downplay importance of problems or deny them. 

  • Excessively put difficult things out of your mind.

  • Engage in passive-aggressive behavior towards others instead of directly naming the problems

  • Think that no good comes out of conflict

  • You think it’s better not to burden others with  your feelings. 

  • Hope that problems will go away by themselves. 

Unfortunately the problems often don’t go away on their own and could possibly fester and get worse. And acting like there is no problems prevents us from actually solving them. There is also a problem in relationships - others might consider avoider untrustworthy because of a long track of withholding unpleasant information. Also problem resolution brings us closer so avoiding conflict keeps relationships superficial. Avoider is especially sneaky because to see what we are avoiding to see is challenging. yet, Avoiders often suffer a lot .

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Here are some things for those of you who have an avoider saboteur. 

1. Watch out for numbness. Feeling numb for you is a signal to ask yourself “what am I ignoring”

2. Think of some situations where conflict brought something positive to your life. 

3. Appreciate your underlying strengths and use them to deal with conflict. 

4. Notice if you are saying yes only because you want to avoid an unpleasant situation. Practice saying no in those cases. 

5. Make a list of all the things you need to do and do ANY item on this list. Do not shame yourself for not doing the hardest task. 

6. Allow yourself to feel your negative emotions for a minute at a time, instead of shutting them off completely. 

7. Ask someone in your life who you can trust to point out to you when you are avoiding stuff and thank them if they do.

Awareness is the very first step to change, by seeing that you habitually avoid, you can change it. 

Marta CzajkowskaComment