Hi and welcome back to the savvy psychologist podcast. I'm your host

Dr Ellen Hendrickson and I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based

research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

This week will continue our three-part series on surprisingly toxic habits, that like

ostensibly loose slot machines or helping out a Nigerian

prince via email promise a big payoff but actually leave you worse off than

before. So this episode will cover the three reasons you should

avoid avoidance. Now avoidance is the technical term for plug in your ears and

yelling I can't hear you whenever something distressing crosses your path.

In short, it's a way of dealing, or not dealing, as it were, with something stressful.

And avoidance is tricky because it works

kind of.

It does help us steer clear of stress and negative emotion

in the short term,

but it costs us dearly over the long term.

It's like successfully tiptoeing around a sleeping pit bull only to realize you're now trapped

in the corner.

And examples of avoidance run the gamut. You may avoid people who make you

nervous, situations that make you sweat, or places that freak you out. For example,

you might avoid working on your novel because you're afraid the critics will hate it. You might have stopped have stopped traveling because you're afraid the critics will hate it.

You might have stopped traveling because you're worried the plane will crash.

And how many of us haven't been to the dentist in years?

...