How to Get Things Done with an Avoidant Personality

Do you tend to run away from your problems, procrastinate on difficult tasks, or withdraw from situations where you feel challenged?

You’re not alone – an avoidant personality is something that many of us have, and it can cause us to ignore tackling difficult or complex tasks.

People who don’t have avoidant personalities might look at your behavior and assume that you are simply unmotivated or lazy.

While there may be truth to this assumption (I don’t want to discount how much each of us are in control of our own destinies), to simply say that you are a lazy or unmotivated person does not examine why you avoid your problems. It ignores the actionable steps you can take to work with your avoidant brain.

An avoidant brain isn’t a faulty brain – it’s a brain that plays by a different set of rules, which all of us can be taught to master.

 

What does it mean to have an avoidant brain?

The source of avoidant thinking stems from anxiety.

Your anxiety is driven by a number of deep, underlying fears you may have:

• • The fear of rejection or judgement – a basic fear in all of us that is central to nearly all anxieties

• • The fear of failure

• • The fear of confronting your own inadequacies

• • The fear of being overwhelmed by how monumental a task appears to be

These fears fuel your anxiety and can become so powerful that they push you to run away from your problems instead of facing them.   

Rather than simply doing the task, you might instead choose to scroll on social media, watch a TV show, even do your household chores – anything that allows for instant gratification and a quicker dopamine release than the task or problem you’re avoiding.

This behavior is completely understandable – after all, as human beings, the pain receptors that ensured our survival and evolution also cause us to avoid doing things that feel painful. And difficult tasks often feel painful.

Unfortunately, avoidance might work in the short term, but over time, avoidance is actually counter-productive in limiting our anxieties.

By avoiding our problems and delaying the moment when we have to address them, the anxiety only grows over time.

 

So, how can we learn to work with our avoidant brains? Here are six steps you can take:

 

1. Identify what your natural inclination is, then tell yourself that you’ll do the opposite.

Often, when we’re faced with a task we’re anxious about, our bodies will automatically shut down and do something else.

In those moments, try to catch yourself and be conscious that this is your avoidant personality taking over. Remember that your anxiety is the villain driving your negative emotions here.

This isn’t going to be easy to do – you won’t always be able to pick up on behaviors that feel automatic. But being mindful of your body’s response to anxiety is something you can practice getting better at over time.

Once you’ve identified your anxiety, pinpoint the instinctive response it’s triggering in you.  

Maybe it’s causing you to tell yourself that you’ll have time to work on the task tomorrow, and you can watch one more episode of Love is Blind instead.

Or maybe it’s reinforcing your fear of the task and causing you to open Instagram instead, our of your desperation to soothe your fear.

Once you’ve identified the instinctive action your anxiety is driving, tell yourself that you will do the opposite of that instinct.  

You’re going to do the task that every bone in your body is screaming for you to avoid.

Remind yourself who is in control here – if you follow your instinct, you are letting your anxiety and your avoidant personality take control.

But if you can train yourself to work against those instincts, then it is you that is taking control of your anxieties and your avoidant brain.

This is going to be difficult to do at first, but remember that once you’ve identified the monster that is your anxiety, it becomes far easier to kill.

2. Give yourself 15 minutes to calm your anxiety

Facing our anxieties is painful – and it’s okay to acknowledge that pain.

Give yourself a short grace period to ready yourself for facing the task you are avoiding.

This could be a 15-minute break, where you engage in one of the simple activities listed below to help ground yourself.

• • Do a simple breathing exercise, focusing on breathing slowly.

• • Journal down your anxiety and fears. Once you’ve noted down all of your negative emotions, write about how you are going to face this fear. As you write, try to visualize the feeling of tackling your anxiety. Think about your bravery, your determination, and the self-growth you will experience by taking action.

• • Go for a short walk outside. Don’t listen to anything or check your phone while walking -use this moment to clear your head. As you walk, think about the movement of your body, and how you are able to push through your limitations.

• • Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you can face this task.

• • Watch a motivational video or speech on YouTube.

• • Play some uplifting music that gets you feeling more positive.

What’s important here is to give yourself a certain amount of time to calm your anxieties, and promise yourself that once the time is up, you must start on the task.

Make sure to set yourself an alarm to remind you of when the grace period is over. This period of time is to help ready your nerves to fight against your instinct to avoid the task – it does not allow you to avoid doing the task.

3. Break your task down into smaller tasks.

Figuring out where to start is often the most important part of starting a task.

If you rush towards the problem headfirst, you might find yourself confronted by how overwhelming the problem is, and this may cause you to fall back into avoidance behavior.

Make this task easy by breaking it down – outline the small steps you need to take in order to complete the bigger task. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, start with completing just the very first task to begin with.

If each sub-task feels digestible and easily tackled on their own, then your brain will be less likely to give up before you’ve completed the entire task.

 

4. What is the smallest first step you can take towards a task?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the steps you need to take, then simply think about the smallest first step you could take towards the task, and start there.

If your bigger task is to apply for jobs, the smallest first step could be to find and shortlist 3 jobs you want to apply for.

If your bigger task is to write a book, the smallest first step you feel comfortable taking might be to write down 500 words describing your protagonist and setting.

5. Do the task for just five minutes

If doing the smallest first step still feels overwhelming, then simply do the task for five minutes. During that time, try to focus purely on the task at hand – don’t give yourself time to sit and think about anything beyond the five minutes.  

You can even set yourself a timer to alert you when five minutes is up.

Five minutes might feel short, but what’s important is that progress, however small, is made. Once the time is up, allow yourself to stop and take a break. Give yourself the credit for working on your task. Even if it was only for five minutes, you managed to overcome your anxiety during that time.

Once you’re ready, push yourself to go for another five minutes. Try bumping your timer up to thirty minutes, or even an hour, if you can.

Breaking up your sub-task into set chunks of time with breaks in between can help you slowly build exposure to your fear.

On top of that, by working on a challenge in short bursts of time, you can force your brain to focus on the now, and on getting as much of the task done in the short period you’ve set. Often, when we give ourselves endless time to work on something, it causes us to overthink about the future, which causes our anxieties creeping up.

Sometimes, a lack of allotted time can actually help you think more nimbly without overcomplicating the problem.  

6. Practice dealing with your avoidant brain through low stake activities

Outside of confronting difficult tasks, practice building up your resistance to the anxieties that drive your avoidant behavior by doing various activities that take you ever so slightly out of your comfort zone.

• • Sign up for a dance or exercise class you’ve never taken before. The idea of dancing or doing a new exercise routine in front of strangers might seem terrifying, but once you’re there, you’ll realize that being less than perfect in front of others doesn’t feel as humiliating as it did in your head.

• • Attend to a social event and challenge yourself to have a conversation with something you’ve never spoken to before. Get used to the discomfort of speaking with strangers.

• • Send a message to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Force yourself to reach out and ask how that friend is doing.

• • Look at getting a therapist. As a starting point, ask your network of friends if they have anyone they can recommend to you. Therapy is a space for you to talk about your anxieties and avoidant behaviors to a professional. Your therapist can help you identify when you’re being avoidant, and reinforce healthier thinking patterns that can fight off your negative thoughts.   

Each of these activities might feel anxiety-inducing at first, but they will leave you with a sense of accomplishment, because your brain will know that it has conquered over its natural avoidance tendencies.