#avoidant behaviour

[therealholdenworther]

I hate it when the people I’m pushing away actually leave

[quotewordsunquote]

If she really didn’t agree, she’d just be quiet about it.

Star, How to Fall Out of Love Madly

[georgianzippy]

patterns of avoidant behaviour

TFW you know someone is being avoidant because they find a task overwhelming, so you helpfully offer to do some or even all of the task for them. And instead of gratefully accepting, they get weird or just ignore you!

I've been on both sides of this and I think it's surprisingly common to get into a mindset where even "Let me do the entire thing for you so you don't have to worry about it" sounds like "I AM COMMANDING YOU TO THINK ABOUT THE STRESSFUL THING" and triggers a further spiral of avoidance. There's a fair dollop of shame mixed in there too.

[thecosmicmasculine]

Life lesson for anyone who needs to hear this.

"Ghosting someone is not detachment. It's avoidance."

Read that again.

Speak your truth. You may think you're sparing someone's feelings. But really you're just making yourself look foolish and cowardly. Just be honest...

[rec0very-j0urney]

I’ve been having a hard time with keeping in touch with people lately; even with my closest friends. It often takes me weeks to answer a text message (someimes months, when I’m at my worst). I don’t want them to think that I don’t care, because I do... I know I’m being unfair and selfish and I feel so guilty, but always end up going back to isolating myself without giving any explanation. 

I think part of the reason why I do this is because when I’m disconnected from the outside world, it kind of makes it easier to disconnect from myself.  There are weeks where all I do is isolate and distract myself 24/7, so that I don’t have to stay in touch with what I feel... because otherwise I get overwhelmed and everything feels like “too much to handle”. I’m not happy with where I’m at in life so I guess getting disconnected from everything is just coping mechanism so that I don’t have to deal with reality... but that is not taking me anywhere

Sometimes I have this idea that just because I’m not actively engaging in self-destructive behaviors, I’m alredy doing the work I need to do to get better. I’ve come a long a way in many aspects of my recovery, but that’s not enough. I need to take responsability and make some changes. I don’t want to keep going like this.

[thingsnotsaidoutloud]

Recognising my avoidant behaviours

Lately I've been reading far too much fanfiction and have come to the conclusion that this is actually a manifestation of my anxiety issues — it's a type of avoidant behaviour; I'm avoiding reality.  I've also become quite bitter about the fact that I can no longer enjoy first person shooter games or anything with suspense or significant amounts of stress.  I don't understand why other people enjoy that, I never have.  I don't like being set on edge and it interferes with my enjoyment of any game in which one is constantly on edge or hyper aware/hyper vigilant.  I expect this is probably because I'm always hyper aware, I even have difficulty getting to sleep because I cannot get my mind to slow down.  I am quite literally constantly thinking, and I feel I have to be doing something at all times with my hands or my mind.  I can't slow down, and I can't relax easily.  The only time I can really allow myself to just drift is if I am semi-conscious in the mornings, or sleeping-in dozing, and even then I'm practising lucid dreaming for the most part.  I actually treasure blank mind moments because they are so rare, it is quite hard for me to genuinely tune out.

[m0dern-magic-f0rmula]

Okay, my housemates are about to go to the co-op so I'm going to go in about 10 minutes...

They asked if I wanted to go with them because I was just about to leave and I said I'm just gonna go later instead

awks.

[ezzarius]

I don't know how to be friends with people I used to know. They remember someone I am not anymore. I don't remember how to be that person.