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Overcome Avoidance
Discover how Metacognitive Therapy helps you face fears and build resilience.
Understanding Avoidance with Metacognitive Therapy
Avoidance might feel like it's protecting you from anxiety or discomfort, but often it keeps you stuck in a loop of fear and stress. At Lazy Therapy, I use Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) to help you face what you've been avoiding and regain control in your life.
How Avoidance Keeps Anxiety Going
Avoidance can show up in many ways – steering clear of people, places, or even certain thoughts. While it might give you some relief in the short term, avoidance actually strengthens the belief that these things are dangerous or too much to handle, which increases anxiety over time.
While some approaches focus on directly facing feared situations, MCT takes a different path by looking at why you avoid in the first place. It helps us explore the beliefs about your thoughts that drive these avoidance behaviours, offering a fresh and empowering way to look at things.
How MCT Helps You Step Out of Avoidance
Metacognitive Therapy works by focusing on the thought processes that keep avoidance going. Here's how:
Looking at the Beliefs Behind Avoidance: MCT starts by helping you identify your beliefs about your thoughts – things like "If I avoid this, I'll be safe" or "Facing my fears would be too much." These beliefs, which you might not even question, often fuel avoidance. Challenging Unhelpful Beliefs: MCT encourages you to think about whether avoidance is really protecting you or if it's actually making your fears stronger over time. Are your beliefs based on facts, or are they just assumptions? Creating Space from Avoidant Thoughts: Instead of avoiding or trying to push away upsetting thoughts, MCT teaches you to simply notice them without getting caught up in them. This helps you break free from reacting in ways that lead to avoidance. Breaking the Cycle: Avoidance often creates a loop where fear leads to avoidance, which then makes the fear even bigger. MCT gives you tools to step out of this loop so you can face fears with a sense of control and calm. Why MCT Can Be Effective for Avoidance
MCT doesn't just look at the avoidance behaviours themselves – it goes deeper to the root cause: how you're thinking about your thoughts. By reshaping your relationship with your thoughts, MCT can offer a more lasting way to manage fear and stress.
Some helpful things about MCT:
It focuses on reducing the need to avoid, not just learning to cope with it.People often notice positive changes relatively quickly.It gives you practical tools to help you face fears and build your confidence.