Meditation And Avoidance: Stop Avoidant Behavior

Did you know that many meditator unintentionally use meditation for avoidance, to prevent themselves from facing thoughts, emotions, or truths that they don’t want to face? Sadly, this rarely helps and can indeed lead us to inadvertently self-sabotage. But it’s okay. By the end of this article you will understand what is happening and what to do about it.

What’s the link between meditation and avoidance?

We all know what it’s like to avoid things we don’t want to face. Heck I often avoid doing my taxes until the last minute. But for some people it becomes a way of life. We avoid things as a coping mechanism to stop us from experiencing pain, whether that be actual physical pain like avoiding a medical procedure, or avoiding an emotional stress like not visiting your family because the last time you did you had a bad argument. 

Avoidant behavior is okay from time to time. Indeed, sometimes when we’ve been through a rough patch it’s better to avoid any more stress because we’re not ready for it. When my father passed I avoided emotional situations for a while because I was already at my limit emotionally. At times like that, avoidance becomes a valid tool for self protection. The issues arise when you start doing it too much, which can harm our mental health. Indeed, research shows that excessive avoidance is linked to increased anxiety and depression (Borkovec et al., 2004).

So what does that have to do with meditation?

When it comes down to it, one of the biggest motivators for all our actions is to prevent or relieve pain. For instance, let’s say we go to the doctor, which of course we do to prevent or alleviate health issues, or we go to work everyday to avoid the pain of not having any money. Those pains are communicated to us via the mind through fear, stress, and anxiety. We feel the fear or the anxiety of a possible problem (being ill / not having money), and the anxiety prompts us to do something about it.

But what would happen if we became really good at shutting off those pain signals without actually addressing the underlying issues? What if we could simply choose not to feel the stress of financial insecurity without taking any steps to earn money? We might feel fine in the moment because the anxiety is gone, but we’d still be heading toward financial trouble. Essentially, we’ve a) lost one of our biggest motivators and b) stopped ourselves from taking necessary actions to mitigate the risk. Unfortunately, this is a potential downside of meditation. Research suggests that mindfulness can unintentionally reinforce avoidant behaviors if practitioners bypass uncomfortable emotions instead of processing them. At that point we start using meditation for escapism.

You’re too good at avoiding the bad

Here’s the crazy thing about it. Sometimes meditation makes us a little too good at avoiding painful emotions like fear and stress, and thereby reduces our urge to take actions to actually change the source of those negative emotions. So where a non meditator might feel stressed about their health and so go to the doctor to relieve the source of the stress, the meditator has learned to tune-out the stress without doing anything.

There’s a very specific moment in our meditation practice when we do this. When we are doing Anapanasati (mindful breathing) and Vipassana, we say to ourselves, “This is just a thought / This is just a feeling”, and in doing so we train the mind to not be affected by negative emotions. Some meditators have done this so much that they have started to experience dissociation.

Buddha actually spoke about this in the Anapanasati Sutta, in which he trains monks to become aware of how the mind clings to positives and avoids negatives and advocates balancing detachment and engagement. If you are very self aware during your meditations you’ll probably notice that you choose to dissociate from negative thoughts and feelings more than positive ones, and so you’ve become skilled at avoiding negatives.

Too much of a good thing

The ability to reduce the impact of negative thoughts and feelings is mostly a good thing. Far more people experience stress and anxiety too much rather than too little. And in helping us reduce those negatives, meditation improves our mental health and our quality of life. And so we certainly do want to continue meditating. But we don’t want to get to the point where we are using meditation to prevent us from experiencing any negatives at all, and we certainly don’t want it to make us less motivated to do the things we need to do. The key, then, is to continue to meditate but also be receptive to a little bit of that stress and anxiety, enough to help us face reality and to act in important ways. With that in mind, let’s now look at how to use meditation for engagement rather than avoidance.

How To Stop Avoidant Behavior

Here are my top 5 ways to stop avoidant behavior with meditation.

1) Self Awareness: The first thing we meditators should do to get out of avoidance is to notice our avoidance patterns. Be honest with yourself and look at the times when you are using avoidance, and how it is affecting you. One good way to do this is by journaling and asking yourself if there is anything in your life that you are not addressing.

2) Deliberately embrace uncomfortable thoughts and feelings

In my online lessons I do a specific meditation technique in which we meditate and embrace those less comfortable thoughts and feelings, learning to engage rather than avoid. It’a a real game changer. If you’d like to try it for yourself, schedule a meditation lesson with me today.

3) Practice Radical Acceptance

Radical acceptance is the practice of fully acknowledging and accepting reality as it is, without resistance or judgment, even when it’s painful or uncomfortable. Research from DBT shows that accepting reality reduces avoidance and enhances problem-solving skills (Linehan, 1993).

Rooted in mindfulness, Radical Acceptance involves letting go of the struggle to change things beyond your control. Instead of suppressing or avoiding distressing emotions, you recognize and allow them to exist, creating space for clarity and healing. Radical acceptance doesn’t mean agreeing with or approving of what’s happening; it means choosing to stop fighting reality. This mindset fosters emotional resilience, reduces suffering, and empowers you to respond to challenges with greater wisdom and compassion. This and other acceptance-based practices like mindfulness and DBT reduce avoidance behaviors and improve emotional resilience (Hayes et al., 2006).

4) Try Inquiry-Based Meditation

Inquiry-based meditation is a contemplative practice where you focus on open-ended questions like “What am I avoiding?” or “What is this discomfort trying to teach me?” to explore your inner world. Instead of suppressing or ignoring difficult emotions, it invites curiosity and openness toward them. By sitting with these questions without forcing answers, you create space for insights to emerge naturally. This approach directly counters avoidance by encouraging you to confront and understand the thoughts or feelings you might otherwise evade. It fosters self-awareness, emotional resilience, and the courage to face uncomfortable truths, transforming avoidance into an opportunity for growth.

5) Conventional treatments for avoidant behavior

• Gradual Exposure: Face avoided situations or emotions in small, manageable steps to build tolerance and reduce fear.
• Cognitive Restructuring: Challenge and reframe negative thoughts that drive avoidance using tools from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
• Time Management: Break tasks into smaller, actionable steps to reduce overwhelm and procrastination.
• Support Systems: Seek help from therapists, support groups, or trusted friends to stay accountable.
• Self-Compassion: Treat yourself with kindness and understanding rather than harsh criticism when addressing avoidance.
• Behavioral Activation: Replace avoidant behaviors with positive, goal-directed actions.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Identify practical solutions for situations causing stress or avoidance.
• Therapy: Engage in therapeutic approaches like CBT, DBT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to address avoidance and other issued meditators face such as DRDP / DDD

Summary

It’s only natural that we should want to avoid pain, and one way in which we can do that is with meditation. Sadly, when you get too good at stopping pain you also reduce your need to make important changes in your life. That’s why avoidance can become a problem. If you’d like my help learning to stop avoidance behavior and embrace a more engaging life, book a private meditation lesson with me today.