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Emotional Avoidance

My students' journaling this week involves how we handle our emotions. I'm showing them that teenagers' brains differ than adults' in the making of decisions, and that emotional avoidance is unhealthy. By that, I mean avoiding painful feelings is unhealthy because you have to go to increasingly greater lengths to make sure you don't feel the way you hate to feel (yes, I'm actually trying to sway their opinion on something, which I normally do not like to do, but I know that this is an important lesson for them to learn young).

It's almost like an anti-drug: instead of searching for a high in some substance or practice, you're guarding yourself against the "low" of painful emotion (fear, anxiety, jealousy, anger, stress, etc.). You end up going farther and farther to keep away from those feelings, but end up spending much of your energy doing so. I wouldn't be surprised to find that one source of obsessive-compulsive behavior is emotional avoidance.

I do not think this means we should give full vent to all of our emotions all the time, but emotional avoidance is no solution to keeping free of pain. It seems as though it will keep us safe in the high towers of emotional safety, complete with bars on the windows and locks on the door. You stay for awhile, and get comfortable; but before long, you won't exactly remember how to get out.

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