What Are You Avoiding?
Oct 19, 2025
Grief has a sneaky way of convincing you that if you don’t look at the pain, it’ll eventually fade away. But that’s not healing—that’s hiding.
You can distract yourself, stay busy, pretend you’re fine.
But the truth is, avoidance doesn’t erase your pain—it just tucks it under your ribs until it leaks out somewhere else.
Yes, temporary avoidance can help you survive the day.
But when it becomes your lifestyle, your world gets smaller.
The laughter, the connection, the hope—they start slipping through the cracks.
You’re not avoiding the grocery store, the song, or the anniversary. You’re avoiding how those things make you feel. And those feelings are the map to your healing.
So ask yourself: What are you avoiding—and what would happen if, just for a moment, you stopped running from it?
If you’re ready to understand your avoidance and finally start healing, join me inside The Grief School. This is where we learn to stop hiding from the pain and start processing it—for real.
Let’s talk about avoidance.
Think back to a time when life actually felt okay. You might’ve even felt good—steady, in control, maybe even safe in your own skin.
You left the house without overthinking it.
You trusted that the world wasn’t out to destroy you. That version of safety feels almost foreign now, doesn’t it?
Then the loss happened.
And suddenly, everything shifted.
The world that used to feel familiar now feels like a minefield. Not because there’s danger lurking around every corner, but because everything reminds you. The grocery store aisle, the song on the radio, even a random smell—it all cuts a little too close.
And no, it’s not always physical danger we’re talking about. It’s the emotional kind.
The kind that makes your chest tighten and your stomach drop.
The kind that whispers,
“Don’t go there. Don’t feel that.
Don’t look at it.”
Because you already know how bad it hurts.
So what do we do?
We avoid.
We avoid people, places, memories, songs, photos, even parts of ourselves that used to feel alive.
We pull back from the world because it’s filled with too many jagged edges that could slice open what’s barely holding together.
Avoidance makes sense in the beginning.
It’s protection.
It’s your brain’s way of saying, “Let’s not drown today.” But over time, it stops protecting you and starts trapping you.
Because every time you avoid the pain, you also avoid the healing.
That’s the real danger.
Question for you: What are you avoiding right now—not because you want to, but because you’re scared of what might come up if you don’t?
Tonight, we’re digging into that. Because grief doesn’t heal in the dark. It heals when you stop running from it.
Let’s clear something up, because this one gets twisted all the time.
When we talk about avoidance in grief, we’re not talking about hiding from people or skipping events. We’re talking about avoiding your feelings.
That’s what’s really going on underneath all the canceled plans and polite excuses.
In grief work, this is called experiential avoidance. It’s when you do whatever you can to not feel what’s actually happening inside you.
It’s your brain saying, “Nope, we’re not touching that. Too painful. Too messy.” So you distract, numb, scroll, clean, drink, shop—anything to quiet the noise in your chest.
Here’s what matters: you’re not avoiding the thing itself. You’re avoiding how that thing makes you feel.
You’re not skipping your friend’s anniversary party because you hate her happiness—you’re skipping it because watching her dance with her husband makes your insides ache for what you’ve lost.
That ache?
That’s what you’re avoiding.
And it makes sense.
The feelings grief brings up can be brutal—loneliness, anger, jealousy, emptiness. Who wouldn’t want to duck out of that?
But every time you turn away from those emotions, you also turn away from healing. Because healing doesn’t happen by dodging pain—it happens when you finally stop running from it long enough to understand it.
So tonight, we’re going to talk about what you’ve been avoiding—and why it’s time to stop trying to outsmart your own heart.
Question for you: What emotion do you keep trying to sidestep, even though you know it’s waiting for you anyway?
Here’s the part people never hear enough—not all avoidance is bad.
Yeah, I said it.
Sometimes you actually need to hit pause on your grief.
Temporary avoidance can be a survival skill. The key word here is temporary.
Grief doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Life keeps coming—bills still show up, kids still need to eat, jobs still expect you to function.
There are moments when you have to tell your grief, “Not right now.” That’s not denial; that’s maintenance.
You can’t live in emotional freefall every second of the day.
Sometimes, you just need a break from the intensity.
Maybe you’ve been crying for days and your body’s begging for stillness.
Maybe you’ve been in the memories too long, and your brain needs to catch its breath.
Taking that short step back isn’t failure—it’s wisdom. It’s knowing you can’t heal if you’re constantly flooded.
And sometimes?
You’re just not ready.
You know there’s a conversation, a photo, or a place that’s too sharp right now.
So you give it space until you’re stronger.
That’s okay. Avoidance only turns unhealthy when it becomes permanent—when the pause turns into a hiding place.
So don’t shame yourself for needing moments of peace. Just remember: grief will wait for you. It always does. The question is, will you come back to meet it when you’ve caught your breath?
Now let’s talk about when avoidance turns against you.
Temporary avoidance is a breather. Prolonged avoidance is a trap.
It’s that slow, quiet slide into believing that if you just keep dodging the pain long enough, it’ll eventually wear itself out and disappear. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t.
Here’s what really happens: every time you push those emotions away, they grow louder in the background. You can try to outwait grief, but it’s patient—it will sit there until you turn around and face it. You can’t outsmart pain. It’s not leaving until you listen.
Think of it like this: don’t think about a white bear. You just did, didn’t you? That’s how the mind works. The more you fight to block something out, the stronger it pushes back. Avoidance doesn’t silence your thoughts—it amplifies them.
And when you keep avoiding the hard stuff, you miss the truth.
Most of the things you fear—those memories, those feelings—they can’t actually destroy you. They hurt, yes, but they don’t end you. And the only way to learn that is to face them.
The longer you hide, the smaller your world becomes. One by one, the people, places, and things that used to mean something start to disappear from your life. You think you’re protecting yourself, but what you’re really doing is cutting off your air supply—your connection, your comfort, your purpose.
Avoidance promises safety but delivers isolation.
So the next time you catch yourself pulling back, ask this: Is this a break, or am I building walls around my heart?
