Understanding the Anxiety Cycle: Why Avoidance Makes It Worse
By Amanda Dafoe, LICSW
"If it scares me, I should do it" was my motto in early adulthood. At that time of my life, I was woefully unaware of much regarding mental health. I was also unaware that I was doing my future self a huge favour, at least for those things I deemed "safe" to try even if I felt scared. There were other things I avoided at all costs — and I felt like that was ok.
The truth is I was actually making it harder for myself to handle those things. Here's why.
How the anxiety cycle works
Anxiety flags a threat — a situation, a thought, a physical sensation and the body responds with a surge of alarm. Avoiding the trigger brings instant relief, and the brain logs it as a win: "That worked. Do it again."
The relief is short-lived, but the lesson sticks: the thing was dangerous, and only avoidance kept you safe. The next time, the trigger feels bigger and the alarm fires faster. Meanwhile, you never get the chance to learn that the feared outcome wouldn't have happened — or that you could have handled it if it did.
This is the anxiety cycle. Avoidance is not a solution; it is the mechanism that keeps the cycle turning.
Why avoidance feels so logical
It is worth being compassionate about this. Avoidance works in the short term. The discomfort goes away. That is a real and immediate reward, and the nervous system is wired to repeat what brings relief. The problem is not that you are doing something irrational. The problem is that the short-term fix comes at a long-term cost.
Over time, the list of things that feel threatening tends to grow, not shrink. The world gets smaller. And the belief that you cannot cope with the feared thing becomes more entrenched, because it has never been tested.
What avoidance actually costs
Relief is the reward. Every escape strengthens the habit.
Avoidance shrinks your world. What starts as skipping one meeting becomes skipping the whole category of things that resemble it.
Confidence erodes. Each dodge quietly says, "I can't cope with this."
Uncertainty grows. What you don't face stays vague, and the imagination fills the gap with worst-case scenarios.
Anxiety about the anxiety piles on: dreading the dread, bracing for the next spike.
Small workarounds — over-preparing, reassurance-seeking, "safe" routines — count as avoidance too. They keep the loop running in disguise.
What breaks the cycle
The evidence-based answer is gradual, supported exposure — approaching the feared thing in a way that is manageable rather than overwhelming, so the nervous system can learn a different lesson: I can handle this. The threat was not as large as it seemed. I survived.
This is the foundation of approaches like Prolonged Exposure Therapy. It is not about forcing yourself into situations that feel unbearable. It is about building a new body of evidence, one experience at a time, that updates the brain's threat assessment.
My early motto — "if it scares me, I should do it" — was a crude version of this. I was accidentally doing exposure work without knowing it. For the things I avoided, I was accidentally doing the opposite. Understanding the difference changed how I think about anxiety, and it is at the core of how I work with clients today.
Anxiety fades when you stay with it long enough to learn it passes on its own.
Gradual, repeated exposure retrains the alarm system: small steps, at a pace you can manage.
The goal isn't zero anxiety. It's proof that you can feel it and still move forward.
Anxiety doesn't shrink when you hide from it. It shrinks when you prove it wrong.