31 May How to Avoid Experiential Avoidance
Although I talk and write a lot about happiness, I always try to emphasise that unhappiness is also a part of life.
No one is, or should expect to be happy all the time. The so-called “negative emotions” are in many ways, normal and appropriate and even useful at times.
But too often too many try to push these away, to avoid feeling “bad”. This is understandable, but not necessarily helpful or healthy.
So, to ensure “real” happiness, it’s healthier to find ways to accept and face up to unhappiness. And this article via Psychology Today, by Bruce Wilson, should help you do this better …
KEY POINTS
- Humans, it seems, have an unwillingness to stay in contact with their unwanted internal experiences.
- Avoiding emotional struggles can transform ordinary feelings into clinical issues.
- In experiential acceptance, there is no attempt to avoid one’s unwanted emotions.
“The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is far advanced, as to make avoidance impossible.” –Thomas Hardy
How do most people deal with unwanted experiences? They avoid them. They try to displace them with alcohol, drugs, half-truths, or lies, to themselves or others. Does it work? Possibly, at least temporarily, but not usually long-term. The depression, anxiety, fear, trauma, etc., still seem to find a place to reside, either in our emotions or in our thoughts.
Humans, it seems, have an unwillingness to stay in contact with their unwanted internal experiences. This attempt to get rid of or avoid unwanted feelings, sometimes quite normal feelings like sadness or anger, can have drawbacks. Avoiding emotional struggles can transform ordinary feelings into clinical issues. Experiential avoidance exacerbates these normal everyday problems (Moran, 2022).
Experiential Acceptance
The process of not simply noticing but also embracing one’s experience without judgment or defence is known as experiential (or psychological) acceptance. This concept is essentially the antithesis of experiential avoidance. “Psychological acceptance typically goes hand-in-hand with cognitive distancing or defusion. In fact, some theorists argue that the process of distancing oneself from one’s distressing experience automatically leads to acceptance of that experience (Brown & Ryan, 2003).”
In experiential acceptance, there is no attempt to avoid one’s unwanted emotions. Instead, there is an acceptance of these experiences, in the service of making positive behaviour changes consistent with one’s goals and well-being.
The definitional goal of acceptance as an emotion regulation strategy is not to change the experienced emotions, but to receive them without control attempts (Hayes, 2004; Kohl et al., 2012). Experiential avoidance seeks to control these unwanted experiences by displacing them with emotional regulation strategies that are counterproductive. They provide temporary relief at the expense of potential growth. They are the proverbial Band-Aid being applied externally in an attempt to manage an internal wound…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE