https://www.verywellmind.com/avoidance-coping-and-stress-4137836
Procrastination, passive-aggressiveness, and rumination are examples of unhelpful coping mechanisms that we may consciously or unconsciously use to avoid tackling a tough issue or facing thoughts and feelings that are uncomfortable.
These behaviors are forms of avoidance coping. Here's more about what that means as well as how you can learn to cope more effectively.
What Is Avoidance Coping?
Avoidance coping—also known as avoidant coping, avoidance behaviors, and escape coping—is a maladaptive form of coping in which a person changes their behavior to avoid thinking about, feeling, or doing difficult things.1
Avoidance coping involves trying to avoid stressors rather than dealing with them.
Avoiding stress might seem like a great way to become less stressed, but this isn't necessarily the case. More often than not, confronting a problem or dealing with a stressor is the only way to effectively reduce the stress it causes.
We strive for "stress management" rather than "stress avoidance" because we can't always avoid stress, but we can manage it with effective coping techniques.
Effective Ways to Manage Stress
The other broad category of coping is called "active coping" or "approach coping." This type of coping addresses a problem directly as a means to alleviate stress.2
For example, talking through problems that are causing stress in your relationship, reframing a situation to recognize the positives rather than only focusing on the negatives, or budgeting more carefully to minimize financial stress all demonstrate active coping.
Active Coping
There are two main types of active coping:
- Active-behavioral coping addresses the problem directly.
- Active-cognitive coping involves changing how you think about the stressor.
When Do People Use Avoidance Coping?
People find themselves using avoidance coping instead of facing stress head-on for many reasons. Anxious people can be susceptible to avoidance coping because initially, it appears to be a way to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts and situations.
But in the long run, an avoidance coping response to stress tends to exacerbate anxiety rather than alleviate it.3
People who are prone to anxiety might have learned avoidance techniques early on and therefore might find it more difficult to learn proactive strategies. If you learned to adopt these behaviors when you were growing up, they can become a habit by the time you are an adult. However, that does not mean that it needs to remain your main mode for handling stress.
Why Avoidance Coping Is Unhealthy
Avoidance coping is considered to be maladaptive (or unhealthy) because it often exacerbates stress without helping a person deal with the things that are causing them stress.4
Procrastination is one example. If something that we have to do stressing us out, we might avoid doing it or even try to stop thinking about it. However, we typically don't stop thinking about whatever it is that needs to be done. Rather, we continue to feel stressed about it until it gets done.
Ultimately, we don't feel less stressed than we would have if we just tackled the task right away rather than putting it off. Instead, we stress about what needs to be done and become even more stressed as we inevitably rush to get it done.
The stress only piles on it we were ultimately unable to perform the task or job well because we had not left ourselves enough time. While some people work well with a deadline looming, it generally isn't the least stressful way to tackle something.
Why Avoidance Behaviors Magnify Stress
- Avoidance approaches can create more anxiety.
- Avoidance behaviors don't solve the problem and are less effective than more proactive strategies that could potentially minimize stress in the future.
- Avoidance can be frustrating to others; habitually using avoidance strategies can create conflict in relationships and minimize social support.
- Avoidance may allow problems to grow.