You get hit the hardest when trying to run or hide from a problem. Like the defense on a football field, putting all focus on evading only one defender is asking to be blindsided.

Most of our suffering comes from avoidance.

Conflict avoidance often causes greater conflict.

I’m freeeee… SPLAT!”.

At first, they’ll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they’ll dislike you.

Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking that there is something to be avoided manifests something to avoid.

Avoidance therapy does not work. One major reason for that is because Avoidance Therapy (diversion, think yourself happy, positive affirmations) is predicated on the validity of ‘Failure of Will.’ Depression is not a choice.

No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics–the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions,...

Our inner experience is that which we think, feel, remember, perceive, sense, decide, plan and predict. These experiences are actually mental actions, or mental activity (Van der Hart et al., 2006). Mental activity, in which...

The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level...

This world today makes one by the day a recluse

People were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford people just aggressively pretended nothing had...

There is no avoidance in delay.

Alterations in regulation of affect (emotion) and impulse:Almost all People who are seriously traumatized have problems in tolerating and regulating their emotions and surges or impulses. However, those with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders tend...

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

People with anxiety and trust issues find themselves drawn to people of consistency because they feel safe with someone who is predictable. However, that doesn’t cure their problem. The anxious person still remains the same...

RIVETING TORPORIt is remarkable how far I am prepared to goIn order to avoid doing the one thing that mightProvide satisfaction, and it is remarkable to considerWhat I will do instead of it, purely for...

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.

Changes in Meaning:Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past,...

Well, she didn’t lock us up in closets.” in fact, my mother behaved much worse than that, but by focusing on the empty closet, I avoided looking at what waited beyond it.

I know. You do care. But inside the framework of a project. Right now it’s your studies. Later it’ll be roads and bridges. But people around you—their lives go on outside the framework. They’re not...

The scientific study of suffering inevitably raises questions of causation, and with these, issues of blame and responsibility. Historically, doctors have highlighted predisposing vulnerability factors for developing PTSD, at the expense of recognizing the reality...

Problem is, the bathroom pass can’t help you escape life. It’s still there when you come out. Problems and crap don’t go away hiding in the can.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

Well, it is true. Sometimes avoiding something can give it more and more meaning rather than less and less.

We play phone tag, back and forth, the kind of tag where it’s clear we’re avoiding each other, where no one wants to be touched, tagged, you’re it

Most of us will do anything to avoid facing ourselves

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these...

Avoid those who seek friends in order to maintain a certain social status or to open doors they would not otherwise be able to approach.

I love running. I’m not into marathons, but I am into avoiding problems at an accelerated rate.

You cannot avoid what you fear because what you fear is inside of you.

He was through with this conversation. As a rule, they tended to avoid questions like “How sane are we?” and “Do our lives have meaning?” The need for avoidance was acute and apparent to both...

A day can really slip by when you’re deliberately avoiding what you’re supposed to do.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Embrace those parts of yourself that you’ve skillfully avoided until now. That’s your true adventure.

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., “That wasn’t really bad, I barely remember it”).

Grandma Donna passed the oyster stuffing and asked my father straight out what he was working on, it being so obvious his thoughts were not with us. She meant it as a reprimand. He was...

Her life was one endless loop that she raced around, with steep banked curves so she could never change or slow down. It just delivered her back to herself, over and over and over.

We numb our minds and heart so one need not be broken and the other need not be bothered.

My mother’s outh drops. ‘Emmy…don’t say those things Emmy. Remember, we don’t talk about those things.”Yes Mom. I remember. That’s why I’m here, looking like this.’An orderly knocks on the door and announces that visiting...

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.

What I’ve yet to realize is that each time I work to avoid that which I fear, I have in that very same action forfeited the blessings that my fear blinded me to. And I’ve...

Laws of silence don’t work….When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don’t work, it’s just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope...

Business crises energize me. Personal crises devastate me. The doctors call it an avoidance tendency. (Mirena to Eve)

We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of...

Fight for change? Thirst for difference?Start talking what men avoid talking about.

Avoidance is paying forward that which I would be much wiser to pay off.

Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.

I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come.I’m free, and against organized, clothed society.I’m naked...