We all avoid. Let’s start there.
We avoid far more than we realize. Just like breathing—we all breathe—but how often are we consciously aware that we’re doing it? Avoidance can be much the same way. It becomes so automatic, so woven into our daily lives, that we rarely stop to notice it.
When most people hear the word avoidant, they think of someone with Avoidant Personality Disorder. While that is a real diagnosis, most of us would not meet the criteria for it. Yet all of us experience avoidance. In fact, avoidance is written into our very survival instincts.
Before we go any further, it is important to make a distinction between Avoidant Personality Disorder and avoidant defenses.
Avoidant Personality Disorder is a clinical diagnosis characterized by a pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, hypersensitivity to criticism, and a tendency to withdraw from relationships despite deeply desiring connection. Individuals with Avoidant Personality Disorder often live with an intense fear of humiliation or rejection that significantly impacts their ability to engage with others.
Avoidant defenses, on the other hand, are something all of us experience to varying degrees. They are the strategies we unconsciously employ to protect ourselves from discomfort, disappointment, vulnerability, shame, or pain. While most of us would not meet the criteria for Avoidant Personality Disorder, nearly all of us can recognize moments when we pull back, stay silent, procrastinate, distract ourselves, withdraw, or hide because something feels too risky.
In that sense, avoidance is not simply a diagnosis. It’s a human experience.
What We Avoid Makes Sense
If I place my hand on a hot stove, I do not stop to rationally evaluate whether I should move it. My body immediately registers pain as a threat and pulls my hand away. Pain signals danger. Danger must be avoided. This instinct serves an important purpose: it protects us physically and helps us survive.
The same process occurs emotionally and psychologically. Our minds and bodies learn to avoid emotional discomfort, relational pain, rejection, embarrassment, criticism, shame, and loss in much the same way they learn to avoid physical injury. It makes sense. We are wired to move away from what hurts.
The problem is that sometimes what once protected us begins to limit us.
So let me ask you again: Do you avoid? And if so, what is it that you avoid?
Perhaps it’s responding to text messages. Maybe it’s taking care of your physical health, scheduling that dentist appointment you’ve been putting off, beginning a workout routine, or opening a bill you’ve been meaning to address. Maybe it is a difficult conversation with a spouse, parent, sibling, friend, or child. Whatever form it takes, most of us can identify areas of life where we continually postpone something we know needs our attention.
When Avoidance Feels Like Love
One of the greatest examples of avoidance in my own life came in the form of a relationship I avoided repairing for nearly ten years. When I finally decided it was time to have the conversation, it felt like I was consenting to the death of someone I was trying to save.
Every time I imagined picking up the phone, my throat tightened. My stomach churned. My heart raced. The fear wasn’t actually the conversation itself. The fear was what might happen afterward.
Once I said how I felt, there would be no taking it back. What if the relationship didn’t survive? What if my deepest fear came true? What if I lost someone I loved?
My avoidance wasn’t because I didn’t care. In many ways, it was because I cared so much, but felt helpless to prevent something awful from happening. A part of me believed that if I stayed silent, I could somehow keep the relationship safe; in a strange way, my avoidance felt like I was saving us. If I avoided the conversation, perhaps I could delay the loss I feared or prevent it altogether.
To those around me, it may have appeared that I had abandoned the relationship, cut myself off, or wanted nothing to do with the people involved. But internally, something very different was happening. I was buying myself time. A fearful part of me had become convinced that the relationship could not withstand honesty. If I revealed what I truly felt, everything would fall apart.
Avoidance became my attempt to preserve the relationship.
What I eventually discovered, however, was that avoidance was not preserving the relationship at all. It was preserving the illusion that everything was okay. The relationship could not heal, grow, or deepen because the very honesty required for intimacy was the thing I was avoiding.
Ironically, the thing I feared would destroy the relationship was also the thing the relationship needed in order to survive.
The Difference Between Surviving and Living
I’ve noticed this pattern in other areas of my life as well. If I don’t go to the party, I don’t have to risk rejection. If I don’t speak up in the group, I don’t have to risk looking foolish. If I don’t try, I don’t have to fail. If I don’t have the conversation, I don’t have to face what might happen next.
The strategy works remarkably well if the goal is survival. But it comes at a cost.
Eventually, I realized that while avoidance was helping me survive, it was preventing me from truly living. It robbed me of time. It robbed me of presence. It robbed me of opportunities for connection. It robbed me of countless moments when I could have been attentive to the people and experiences in front of me but instead found myself consumed by fear.
One of the most important things I have learned is that desire and fear can coexist. I can deeply desire connection and simultaneously fear rejection. I can long to be seen while also wanting to hide. I can want intimacy while fearing vulnerability. The presence of fear does not mean something has gone wrong. Fear is part of being human.
But fear does not have to become the author of my actions.
Love Gets the Final Word
This is where my faith has transformed the way I understand avoidance. Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly tells us, “Do not be afraid.” I used to hear those words as a command to stop feeling fear. Now I hear them differently.
I believe God is inviting us not to be ruled by fear.
I want to honor the parts of me that feel afraid. I want to listen to them. I want to understand what they are trying to protect. Fear often emerges because something within us perceives a threat. Sometimes those fears make sense given our experiences. Sometimes they are connected to old wounds, old losses, or old disappointments. They deserve compassion.
But I no longer want fear deciding how I live. Instead, I want love to decide.
The question that has changed my life is surprisingly simple: What is the most loving thing I can do right now?
Sometimes fear says, “Hide.” Love says, “Step forward.”
Fear says, “Protect yourself.” Love says, “Trust.”
Fear says, “Stay silent.” Love says, “Speak honestly.”
The choice is not always clear. It is not always comfortable. It’s rarely easy. Yet I have found that every meaningful moment of growth has required me to act in love while simultaneously feeling afraid.
Called Out of Hiding
I still have moments when I hide. I still have moments when fear wins. But I almost always regret those moments. The moments I rarely regret are the ones when I choose courage. The moments when I make the phone call, speak the truth, attend the gathering, send the text, ask for help, or show up honestly. Those moments leave me with something fear can never give me: freedom.
Avoidance is not a stranger to humanity; it can be traced back all the way to the Garden where Adam and Eve hid. Fear always invites us into hiding. God always invites us out. Not because there is no risk. Not because there is no pain. But because we were not created merely to survive.
We were created to live.