Episode #457 – What avoidance really shows us

Welcome back to the show. Thanks for tuning in today for a topic that maybe, at first glance, doesn’t sound like one that’s going to be a whole lot of fun. But as I’ve reflected on my notes for today’s episode, I realized this is good territory for us to explore. I think there’s a lot to learn here that will be really enlightening and can create a lot of freedom for those of you who are brave enough to listen.

I’m going to start with what I think will probably be a relatable story for a lot of my midlife listeners—women who are in the same stage of life that I am. It’s really about me over the last, let’s say, five to seven years, avoiding something that I avoided for way longer than I should have.

For a number of years—really more than a few, and I’m embarrassed to say it—I was dealing with a range of symptoms that I didn’t really recognize. I had all the reasons to explain them away: disrupted sleep—why was I waking up at 3:00 a.m.? Lack of temperature regulation—I would be really hot or really cold. A general feeling that I wasn’t operating at full capacity. I just didn’t have the level of productivity or sharpness that I was used to.

There were a few other things, too: mood dysregulation, for one. I kind of knew, in the back of my mind, what was likely going on, but I was taking absolutely no steps to do anything about it. I knew I could make a doctor’s appointment, probably get some testing done, and talk to someone who specialized in women’s health. I could potentially feel significantly better. The key word there is potentially.

But I just didn’t do it. I didn’t take any of those steps. I was busy. It seemed complicated. I told myself it would take care of itself, and I really convinced myself that I was managing—that I was doing just fine.

I also think I was telling myself it just wasn’t time yet. This was so manageable. I thought, I don’t know what people are talking about. This is fine. I’ll be fine.

Then one day I finally made the appointment and said, “Okay, here’s everything I’ve got going on.” My sweet doctor looked at me and said, “You are probably five to seven years later than you should have been in coming in to have this conversation. We could have had you feeling better a long time ago.”

Of course, I’m talking about the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, and this collection of symptoms that has gotten so much attention in the media over the last several years. The conversation around this topic has just skyrocketed.

I was fully aware of all of that. I even had Dr. Lisa Larkin on this podcast talking about it, and I still didn’t do anything about what was going on in my own body. Honestly, I had heard enough negative information about hormone replacement therapy that I didn’t think I was a candidate for it.

I had essentially taken myself out of the game. Then I read Mary Claire Haver’s book. Most of you have probably read it if you’re in this season of life. One section, in particular, really shifted my thinking. She was debunking some of the bad press that hormone replacement therapy—specifically estrogen therapy—had received over the years.

She explained what the science actually said, where the flaws in the research were, and what the evidence really showed. That was enough for me to think, Maybe I should talk to my doctor.

Specifically for me, it was the belief that oral estrogen was probably never going to work because of another condition I have. But I learned that a transdermal estrogen patch would probably be an option.

That was the inflection point for me. It got me over the hump and prompted me to go have the conversation.

Of course, once I did, everything started shifting. I had the right combination of hormones coming back into my body, and I was able to reclaim a level of capability, capacity, energy, and sleep that I had simply assumed was gone. I felt a whole lot better in pretty short order. A lot of things came back online.

The first thing I thought was, Why did I wait so long? What on earth was I waiting for?

Of course, I know now—and I probably could have told you then if I’d stopped to think about it. What was I waiting for? What were the misconceptions, beliefs, or stories I was telling myself that were getting in the way?

If you’ve ever said those words—”Why did I wait so long?”—about anything, then I think today’s episode is for you.

Today we’re going to talk about avoidance—not as a character flaw or laziness, but as a signal.

Why do we avoid things? We’ll talk about why avoidance happens, what it costs us, and some other ways of looking at this pattern.

I want to start with a question. I want you to sit with it for a second as you’re listening:

What do you already know you probably need to do?

Maybe you’re not saying it out loud. Maybe you haven’t taken any action. Maybe you haven’t journaled about it. But you already kind of know: I need to do this thing.

What is that thing for you?

I ask clients this question all the time, and what I’ve noticed is that the answer usually doesn’t take very long to surface. It’s often sitting just beneath the layer of busyness we’re all living under—beneath other people’s needs and the general noise of everyday life.

That thing you know you need to do—or say, or stop doing, or start doing—you’ve probably been circling around it without ever quite landing on it.

You think about it from time to time. It resurfaces.

That’s avoidance.

We have all kinds of other names for it, and we’ll talk about those today, but that’s really what it is. You already know. You’re just not doing it.

The reason it matters—and the reason I’m dedicating this entire episode to it—is that avoidance always has a cost.

Sometimes it’s a quiet cost. It doesn’t announce itself by saying, “Here’s the price you’re paying for avoiding this.” It simply accumulates in the background while you stay very busy doing other things.

Most of us already know what we’re avoiding. We just haven’t been willing to go there yet.

Today we’re going to talk about what avoidance looks like, especially during this season of life when everything feels incredibly complex. Everyone needs something from you, and there’s very little time left for yourself.

We’ll also talk about what usually happens when you finally stop avoiding the thing you’ve been putting off, because that’s worth paying attention to.

Let’s start with what avoidance actually is—the mechanism behind it.

Most people don’t call it avoidance. I wouldn’t have told you I was avoiding talking to a doctor. I would have said I didn’t have time.

We call it being busy. We say we’re not ready. We tell ourselves we’re waiting for the right time—when things settle down a little, when we have more bandwidth.

And look, I know you’re busy. I know you genuinely are. Sometimes it really isn’t the right time.

But avoidance has a particular quality that’s different from a legitimate delay.

It’s self-perpetuating.

The right time never quite arrives. There’s always another reason. Another delay. The thing simply never gets done.

Underneath that behavior—underneath all the not doing—is almost always an emotion.

Something bubbles up when you imagine actually doing the thing.

For most people, it’s some version of discomfort. Fear shows up a lot here. We give fear lots of different names: dread, anxiety, discomfort. Sometimes it’s the anticipation of a negative reaction.

Sometimes it’s the weight of the decision itself, where something genuinely important is at stake and you can feel the consequences of making the wrong choice.

Whatever that emotion is, it’s probably the reason you’re avoiding the thing.

It’s not because you’re weak, and it’s not because you don’t care. It’s actually because you do care.

You’re constantly running a calculation: Is this worth it?

The emotional cost feels heavier than the potential benefit, so you stay in the space of “not yet.”

We avoid these courageous conversations, and the reason is very straightforward. It’s because the imagined version in our heads of how they could go is so terrible that it surpasses the discomfort of silence. The silence starts to feel like stability. Tolerating the uncertainty of not having the conversation feels more stable than facing the uncertainty of having it. We assign certainty to how it’s going to go. We tell ourselves, “It is going to go terribly.” And because of that false certainty, the only way to combat it feels like doing nothing.

And when we do nothing, we don’t get the outcome we want, but we also don’t have to face the potential negative fallout from that conversation. There are so many conversations left unsaid.

Again, this comes up with clients all the time. I am forever asking, “Where do you need to go have a courageous conversation?” And people don’t like it, right? It’s not fun to think about. But building the skill to have those conversations—to get things out in the open—is so powerful because silence has its own cost.

Silence builds resentment. Silence builds distance. The thing you’re not saying becomes the elephant in the room during every other conversation you’re having. You’re talking about dinner, but the elephant in the room is still right there.

It’s never going to go away until you have the conversation. I know this sounds like a real downer today, but I promise this gets better than I’m making it sound.

So, decisions are one of the things we’re actually avoiding. Courageous conversations are definitely something we’re avoiding. I think health interventions are also things we avoid.

People I have coached over the years have talked about their relationship with various elements of their health: their relationship with food, alcohol, and patterns of behavior. We allow things to fester.

Sometimes we know something is off, and we have a hunch that we could do something about it, but we think, “I don’t think I want to do the thing. I don’t think I want to manage the tension of the change I would have to make to get a different outcome.”

Sometimes it isn’t even a behavior change that’s needed. Sometimes there’s a medication we can take or another intervention that can really make a difference. I mentioned hormone replacement therapy earlier. The women I know who have made that decision—and again, this is a very personal decision you make with your doctor—have overwhelmingly positive stories.

There often isn’t a lot of effort required. It may simply be taking something through some kind of format: a patch, a tablet, a cream, or another option. It’s not necessarily a high-cost intervention. It’s not like, “I have to change my entire behavior or give something up.” It can be relatively simple, and yet there can still be a lot of resistance.

Sometimes health interventions do require behavioral change, and we really don’t want to do that. So we avoid the change but continue feeling worse than we need to for longer than we need to.

I think confronting it head-on and at least understanding your options is the power move.

Another thing I think we avoid has come up in some group coaching calls recently in my communities: testing for children.

This includes testing for developmental delays or evaluations when a child is struggling with things like reading, attention, or navigating social situations in ways that feel slightly different. Parents often sense that something is going on before they’re willing to do something about it—or even name it.

The testing gets deferred for all kinds of reasons. Waitlists are long, it takes time to see a practitioner, and we don’t want our children to be labeled.

There’s a lot of fear around labeling because a diagnosis can feel like confirmation of something we’d rather not confirm. When I talk with parents who have a hunch that something is amiss, I often see this avoidance of confirming that hunch because, until then, we can pretend it isn’t real.

But the bravery and courage parents show when they decide, “We’re going to take a closer look. We’re going to do the testing. We’re going to get the diagnosis and access treatment, support, strategies, or medications,” can open doors that weren’t accessible before.

The label that felt like it would be limiting often turns out to be the doorway to support.

I could tell stories for days. I probably should do an episode on parents who courageously pursued diagnoses ranging from dyslexia to ADHD to autism and came out the other side with tools, practitioners, and support that allowed their children to thrive.

That’s another area where I see us delaying: delaying our own health interventions, the decisions we need to make, the courageous conversations we need to have, and, in some cases, testing for our children.

I also think we avoid very practical life administration tasks, like making a will.

The number of people listening today—maybe it’s you—who are thinking, “I was hoping she wasn’t going to say making a will because I don’t have one,” is probably pretty high.

When you learn how easy it can be to create a simple will so you and your family are protected, you’re going to wonder why you waited so long. We make these things harder than they actually have to be.

Wills are a classic example. I see it all the time. People say, “I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

Another example is people who want to start businesses. They get hung up on questions like, “How do I start an LLC? How do I get a company name, a bank account, or a federal employer identification number?”

These tasks can sound intimidating because they’re unfamiliar. We think, “I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know how to do that. It sounds complicated.”

The same thing happens with starting a will. These administrative tasks feel annoying, so we avoid them. And sometimes there is a price to be paid for avoiding them for too long.

When you know there’s something in your world where you’re thinking, “I just need to do this. I just need to take care of this thing,” recognize that this is another place where the avoidance pattern shows up.

So what explains this behavior? Why do we do this?

I do think emotion is one of the biggest factors. Sometimes fear comes up, or some other negative emotion. Sometimes it’s simply the feeling that something is too complicated: too many steps, too many things to figure out, too much we don’t know.

When I was talking about wills or starting a business and the paperwork involved, those examples fit into that category. You might not feel a lot of emotion about them, but you might think, “How would I ever know how to do this?” It feels overwhelming, so you don’t do it.

I want to offer this perspective shift:

What if it feels difficult because you’ve never done it before?

It feels difficult because it’s unfamiliar—not because it’s actually that complicated.

Often, it’s simply unmapped territory. You don’t have the map. But the people available to help you through it have walked this path many times.

If you walk into your doctor’s office and say, “I want to talk about hormone replacement therapy,” they think, “Yes, I do this every day.”

If you go to an attorney and say, “I want to make a will,” they think, “Great, I’m doing several of these today.”

The neuropsychologist evaluating your child knows what they’re looking for. They’ve done this many times. It’s routine for them.

That gap between how overwhelming something feels to you and how routine it is to an expert is what I call the complexity illusion.

We think something is incredibly complicated, but in reality, it’s often just new to us.

When someone finally does the thing they’ve been avoiding, the first thing they often say is, “That was so much easier than I thought it was going to be.”

And then comes the next sentence:

“What was I waiting for?”

There’s relief, but there’s also frustration because you realize you could have had that relief much earlier.

All that time spent carrying something that turned out to be manageable.

I don’t think we do that math carefully enough.

We spend so much time thinking about the discomfort on the front end. We imagine having the difficult conversation with our spouse, colleague, or child and how hard it will be.

But we don’t think enough about what’s on the other side. We don’t think about what it will help us create or what it costs to carry that burden for months or years.

The weight accumulates quietly.

Six months later, a year later, two years later, the issue is still there. Resentment builds when things go unsaid. Options close because decisions aren’t made. Time passes while we wait for a better moment.

It’s exhausting.

That energy could be spent on something that moves you forward.

Every day you avoid something, you quietly reinforce the belief that you can’t do it.

You tell yourself, either out loud or silently, “I can’t do this.”

And that chips away at your confidence, your self-esteem, and your belief in yourself.

Avoidance is never neutral.

It’s teaching you something about yourself.

Avoidance is never free.

The bill just comes later.

We can delay it for a little while or a long while, but eventually it comes due.

So what I want you to take away from this episode is to come back to where we started.

A lot of what we want requires us to stop avoiding the action needed to get there.

If we want relief from medical symptoms, we have to make the appointment, see the doctor, and follow through.

If we want a relationship to be better, we have to have the courageous conversation.

If we want our children to get the support they need, we have to help them access it.

Whatever the territory is where you’re thinking, “I know the thing I need to do or say, and I know I’m avoiding it,” I want you to take something from today’s episode that helps move you into action.

Ask yourself:

What have I been circling?

Where am I rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while the real thing I need to do remains untouched?

That’s your homework this week: at least name it. Say it out loud, even if only to yourself. See it clearly so you can begin building the courage to do something about it.

Before I wrap up today, if this topic is hitting close to home, I want to make sure you know what’s coming up in August in the Coaching Circle.

Our next masterclass is happening on August 11, and I’m teaching a live masterclass on emotional resilience.

Think of this as the skills for moving through those uncomfortable emotions that sit underneath avoidance and other patterns of behavior.

It’s the next layer of the work: understanding how to navigate these emotions so you can create forward momentum.

Avoidance is one of the things we’re going to tackle head-on.

If this is a pattern you see in yourself, this is a class that will help.

The Coaching Circle focuses each month on a different foundational skill for living a full life with the time, energy, and capacity needed to live it well.

These classes are exclusively for Circle members. If you want to attend, all you need to do is join the Coaching Circle. The link is in the show notes, and I hope you’ll join me on August 11 for this next class.

That is all for today, my friends.

Until next time, let’s be brilliant.