Emotional Avoidance 195
The function of a behavior dictates its utility for your emo-
tions. Social support can be an excellent tool to help you cope with
stressful events, and devoting large amounts of time to personally
meaningful projects can often be very profitable. However, there
are instances when these behaviors are more harmful than help-
ful. If you are performing them to avoid unpleasant emotions, then
it might be helpful to take a step back and ref lect. Perhaps these
actions are reinforcing your perceptions that future uncertainty is
threatening. Therefore, you should accept worrisome thoughts in
a nonreactive manner rather than feeling compelled to seek reas-
surance or to put off doing something you don’t want to do. By
eliminating these safety behaviors, you will be in a better position
to regulate your emotions more f lexibly and learn more adaptive
information about your situation.
•••In this chapter, you learned more about the role of avoidance
and its deleterious effects. There’s certainly more to expo-
sure than just exposure itself! Exposure to anxiety- provoking
experiences needs to be done in a certain way: repeatedly
and without avoidance. This is true whether your anxiety is
driven by your thoughts or by the things and situations you
encounter. Just as physical exercise increases bodily strength,
frequent practice of these exposure exercises will give you
greater mastery over your anxiety and facilitate more f lexi-
ble emotion regulation. Remember to be patient with your-
self, and use the exercises in this chapter to extend what you
have accomplished so far with the skills provided in the
earlier chapters.