Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson. If you're new to the podcast, this

is where we explore the practical science of lasting well-being. And if you've listened

before, welcome back. I've been looking forward to today's episode where we're going to

be getting back to our roots a little bit here and talking about a common psychological

challenge, avoidance and avoidant behaviors. We'll explore what avoidance is, some common

forms it takes, and what we can do to limit the unhealthy aspects of avoidant behavior and

the impact that that has on our lives. So to help me do that, I'm joined as usual by

Dr. Rick Hanson. So dad, how are you doing today?

I'm good and I'm really glad that we're going to talk about this topic because I've avoided

important things at different times in my life and I can relate to this topic quite personally.

Yeah, same. I mean, I think it's one of those ones where we've all done it and sometimes

it can be really easy to almost lose track of the enormous impact that avoided behaviors

could have on somebody's life. And then there are a lot of things that people avoid where

we don't necessarily really think of them as being avoidant until you start kind of delving

more into the psychology behind it. And you can see how underneath it all, there is truly

some kind of a critical experience that a person is avoiding. And as they open themselves

up to it, all of a sudden, all of this kind of new possibility can unfurl from that.

But we'll get to that in more detail in a little bit. Before we get into our content,

I want to give you a couple of quick reminders. First of all, you can find us on social

media, the podcast, Rick and I all have our own Instagram and Facebook profiles. I've

included some links to those in the description of today's podcast. Second, if you'd rather

be watching this episode right now and you're listening to it, you can watch it on my YouTube

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