Avoidance

Explanations > Behaviors > Coping > Avoidance Description | Example | Discussion | So what?

Description
In avoidance, we simply find ways of avoiding having to face uncomfortable situations, things or activities. The discomfort, for example, may come from unconscious sexual or aggressive impulses. Avoidance may include removing oneself physically from a situation. It may also involve finding ways not to discuss or even think about the topic in question.

Example
I dislike another person at work. I avoid walking past their desk. When people talk about them, I say nothing. My son does not like doing homework. Whenever the subject of school comes up, he changes the topic. He also avoids looking directly at me.

Discussion
Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope. When feelings of discomfort appear, we find ways of not experiencing them. According to the dynamic theory, avoidance is a major defense mechanism in phobias. Procrastination is another form of avoidance where we put off to tomorrow those things that we can avoid today.

So what?
To get someone to face what they are avoiding, you may have to corner them or otherwise present them with a situation where they are unable to avoid the situation. If the discomfort is very strong, they may fight back hard, so be careful. You can also use avoidance to persuade a person to do something. Give them a choice of two actions, one of which is something you know that they tend to avoid or which is likely to be less desirable. They will pick the path you want in order to avoid the less desirable way.

Avoidance
An exploration of flower essences that free up the courage, will, and desire to deal with the core of avoidance

Avoid
1. 2. 3. to keep away from something to stop oneself from doing something to prevent something from happening

Avoidance is an important concept in life. If we can steer clear of situations and people that do not support a harmonious life, we feel safer and more peaceful. Life is immeasurably better when we avoid dangerous situations. Sometimes putting off an action is in our best interest. There are times when it is necessary to avoid dealing with painful feelings in the moment they arise so that we can later process them in a safe environment. However, we sometimes use our ability to avoid people, things, situations, feelings, and realizations in a way that creates disharmony. Most of us have developed strategies to avoid things, such as uncomfortable feelings that arise, responsibilities that we would rather not have, communication with others, or issues that just seem too big or overwhelming. We avoid dealing with issues with which we feel intimidated or insecure. We have developed clever strategies to avoid things. Escaping from the present moment is a popular one. Denial of situations or feelings is another. Rushing around and creating busyness is a typical cultural strategy. Rationalizing and remaining mentally aloof from feelings is another way to avoid things. Avoidance strategies may require a lot of energy to maintain when what you are avoiding has power over you. Let's explore some insights about avoidance and some flower essences that help us free up the will, courage and desire to deal with its core.

Avoidance as Denial

One of my favorite flower essences that deals with avoidance is Bouvardia. This bright red flower helps us when we have a tendency to avoid conscious confrontation of emotionally difficult issues. A participant in one of our classes called it "the queen of denial" because it can bring us out of denial. Just as the bright red trumpet-like shape of the flowers seem to loudly announce things, so this flower essence helps us clearly see something that is necessary. I have found that this flower essence can redirect avoidance patterns into positive response and action. It lays the foundation for calm, clear thinking that is unclouded by emotional reactivity. Bouvardia can fortify your determination and will to confront life directly and consciously.

Escaping the Present Moment

One popular avoidance strategy is the tendency to escape the present moment and become overly focused on either the past or the future. Crisis - Desert Emergency Formula is excellent for keeping you firmly in the present moment. Even if the present moment contains something you wished you didn't need to deal with, by being more fully present you can find that the resolution is there as well.

Hiding From Life

Mexican Shell Flower is an important flower essence for those of us who hide away from many things in life. Even if you dare dream of what you want, you lock yourself inside a shell and hide from taking any steps toward getting it. Locked away in a shell, you avoid the cause of this self-enforced withdrawal.
"Mexican Shell Flower helps us open up and face whatever it is that holds us back in life. We find the courage to face our fears, our sadness, our sense of low self-esteem, and whatever it is that makes us want to hide away. "It is the essence of choice for coming out of your shell. Just as a bird has to break its way out of a shell, so too does Mexican Shell Flower help us break out of energetic shells that hold us down in life. Just as the flower throws itself open to reveal strong red colors, so too can its essence help us throw ourselves open and activate our gentle warrior strength. It brings us the conviction that we will not be defeated." [1]

I have used this flower essence with shy children who are afraid of going to school or facing a new situation or circumstance. It has also been shown to be a great support for women who want to start a new business or change their career. Teens who are painfully uncomfortable in social relationships have found this essence to be essential to breaking their inner barriers and establishing social skill. Anyone who feels unsafe going out into the world can use Mexican Shell Flower to break out of self-imposed isolation and access the inner courage to face the root of their fears.

Courage to Face Things

For those who don't have the pattern of hiding like Mexican Shell Flower, but who tend to lack courage to face situations in life, Activating & Honoring the Warrior Formula is an excellent support. This is the essence to use when you find that you tend to automatically avoid situations that you would rather not face. Some part of you is convinced that you just don't have the courage to stand up to the situation at hand. Activating and Honoring the Warrior Formula helps you activate your inner archetypal warrior and access courage, resolve and focused energy to conquer your inner enemies and overcome obstacles, difficulties and shortcomings. It helps you uncover the fact that courage already lies within you. By standing and facing the situation, you find that everything you need is right within you.

Busyness

One common avoidance strategy is avoiding things by busying yourself with obsessive worry and rushing around to complete tasks. This strategy is a great one for keeping your attention so filled with things that you can't be aware of your inner state. Unfortunately, this strategy ultimately may keep you from conscious communication with your emotional, spiritual and soul needs. Jumping Cholla Cactus is the essence to use for terminating this avoidance pattern. It helps create an inner feeling of balance, steadiness, and peacefulness that helps you take things one step at a time. It creates within you the optimal atmosphere for facing and dealing with things.

Taking Responsibility
For those who avoid or fear taking responsibility, MANifesting the Inner King Formula is the essence to use. This is the essence that can help you find you inner archetypal king, who is well endowed with the qualities of dignity, nobility, justice, and confidence to take on a responsibility because it is the right thing to do. Many of us who tend to avoid responsibility lacked good masculine role models growing up. This essence can help you go beyond societal models to uncover a new one from within you.

Avoiding Communication

An important issue of avoidance is communication. Most of us at one time or another avoid saying something we know we must because we fear the reaction of the other person. You may fear that you will lose the respect or love of another if you say what you feel you must. Fishhook Cactus is the essence of choice for helping you open your mouth and take a risk. All communication involves some risk. You cannot control or oftentimes accurately predict how someone else will respond. If you can clearly communicate the truth of your heart, you remain true to yourself. Most often that other person doesn't respond as you feared and you realize that the fear that held you in non-communication was unfounded.

Avoiding Uncomfortable Feelings

There are a number of ways in which we may avoid feeling our feelings, especially ones with which we are not comfortable. Milky Nipple Cactus can help you if you tend to rationalize your feelings and escape actually feeling and dealing with them. It is especially for those who had problems with the mother/child connection as children. This flower essence can bring a greater sense of ease and confidence in your ability to nurture yourself emotionally.

Avoiding Grief
For those who have a tendency to avoid feelings of grief, Hackberry flower essence can be a friend. Grief can take you to a very deep and meaningful experience within, yet many of us equate grief with feeling depressed. Hackberry helps you go beyond your concept of grief and allow the process to be what it is: a wave of feeling that pulls you under and then spits you back out again and again until it is over. Feelings of grief can revisit you at a later time and Hackberry can help you let go of feeling inadequate for the length or depth of your grieving.

Things that Seem Too Painful

Wolfberry flower essence can help us when we avoid something that seems too painful to process. This is the flower essence to use when you feel overwhelmed by an inner process that is taking place that you can't understand with your mind. Your mind automatically assumes that it's probably a big overwhelming mess and goes into avoidance mode. Wolfberry helps you let go of the need to understand what is happening and just let it unfold. It supports you in allowing deep inner processing to happen without the need to either understand it all or avoid it.

Surfacing of Repressed Feelings

If you are in the process of a healing crisis or a crisis of awareness, it is not uncommon to run up against a strategy of not allowing repressed feelings to arise. It's uncomfortable when old unprocessed feelings come up and it is natural to try and avoid them. However, it is only by allowing them to surface that you can be free of them. Aloe is the flower essence to use when this happens. Aloe helps you stop resisting the process so you can allow old memories, wounds, or feelings to arise and be felt without judging it all. It cultivates patience with the healing process and helps you perceive it as a supportive thing.