How to Break the Anxiety- Fear-Avoidance Cycle

The ultimate goal of ACT is to help us move closer to what we care about in life.  From an ACT perspective, the main thing that gets in the way of this is when our behavior becomes primarily about avoidance. When we’re focused on avoiding difficult thoughts and feelings, we’re not focused on moving toward what we care about.

You can treat a lot of “I am” problems this way, reframing them as simpler “I do” problems. Most traits we want to change have one or two simple actions at their core. Instead of “ stop being messy ,” clean. Instead of “ stop being so shy ,” meet people.

Finding the core action can release all of that diverted, shackled mental energy; once you find ... See more

One of the most common problems that clients present within therapy sessions is that of experiential avoidance. Experiential avoidance is a process of anticipating problems and coming up with solutions, which often involve getting rid of the problem or avoiding it (Harris, 2011). This works great for many of our external problems, but its effective... See more