Those Normalized Ways We Avoid Emotions That Are Still Pretty Fucking Toxic
Exploring the Subtle, Yet Harmful, Emotional Avoidance Tactics We All Use
I tried to write a Fourth of July article and got stuck. Today, I’m realizing that my failure to create was masking my sadness about celebrating the Fourth with the usual patriotism and consumerism. As I connected to this deeper sense of sadness, fear, and confusion that I had been avoiding, inspiration arose to finish an article I started weeks ago. Self-reflection has creative and productivity benefits. This article uses my first-person account to bring awareness to the many socialized ways we avoid our emotions.
Alcohol as an Escape
Recently, I decided to pause drinking alcohol. Transparently, I broke that pause after a month to have a Bloody Maria while watching the sunset from an airport lounge on my way to Copenhagen, Denmark. It felt right. I learned during the pause that it is enjoyable to decouple alcohol from many celebratory or self-preservatory moments. I’m grateful for the self-agency of allowing myself the drink but have since returned to intentional abstinence for now.
The Toll on the Nervous System
The original inspiration to examine my use of alcohol came because, as I’ve gotten older, my nervous system doesn’t rebound as well the day after. I made the choice to cut back on drinking after the stakes rose a bit following some health concerns with my father. After a couple of weeks of showing up for him and family, I found myself stressed. I had a drink to close the night. The next day, I noticed that I was less productive and had to work harder to maintain my grace in stressful situations. I felt shame at the idea that I might not show up in my integrity today because I chose to have a drink yesterday.
After initiating the pause, I began to notice that I was a lot more present to subtle emotions showing up in my days. It prompted me to think about all the subtle and socially acceptable ways we escape our emotions. If I practiced gentle awareness there as well, what might unfold for me?
Escaping Behaviors
This realization has been a long time coming. I began noticing my escaping behavior over four years ago. Back then, I had a litany of ways of escaping my emotions, some normalized and some not. The actions varied, but the subconscious desired outcome often had commonalities. At the highest level, they were ways of avoiding sensations that arise with shame, sadness, fear, and anger.
Holiday Stress and Escapism
On the Fourth of July this year, I was battling a mix of jet lag from my international travel schedule and sadness and fear about the political and economic climate in my country. I attempted to use work as an escape but didn’t have the energy to tackle the subconscious dissonance I was experiencing by trying to contribute to capitalism and depolarizing our political climate while being emotionally affected by those same phenomena. I’m glad my body chose rest for me. I was bound by too many competing factors. In the past, this would be a place I’d grab a drink or some other form of escape. On holidays like the Fourth of July, I’m mindful of the positive and not-so-positive ways that consumption of food, beverages, and products help us to be resilient and put our troubles behind us.
Media Consumption
Watching TV, scrolling on the internet or our phones, listening to the news on podcasts or radio, or other forms of media consumption are other common and normalized ways we escape our emotions. In my work as a Men’s Emotional Leadership coach, I empathize with men who, like me, judge themselves heavily for the legal yet stigmatized ways the media industry profits from our emotional escapism, like porn, gambling, and video games. There is an obvious link to the cause, solution, and subsequent hangover feeling of shame that follows these escape routes. Less stigmatized media also has negative effects. News ratings drive the proliferation of fear-inducing and sensationalized stories that have a long-term effect on mood, outlook, and internalized narratives. While reality TV, dramas, sports, news, and documentaries can provide positive benefits such as useful knowledge and information, cultural relevance, and mindless relaxation, too much at any one time might just be your way of avoiding less comfortable realities in your life.
Faith and Inaction
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Just place your worries in the hands of God” or something of the kind? While phrases like this can help provide the extra boost of faith any of us need at times to push ourselves beyond our expectations and into resilience or even greatness, they can also serve to diminish the self-agency required to go from belief to action. For the many who have turned to faith as their guide through challenging times, many still use faith to hide their own inactions for themselves and others. As an individual re-examining my relationship with spirituality and organized religion, I realize that an issue I mean to reconcile is how often important and necessary conversations get paved over by rhetoric or maxims that remove personal agency and accountability. I find it condescending, toxic, and even dangerous as the well-being and liberty of others get threatened by habits and covenants that simply feel easy to say yes to.
Stonewalling and Silence
Perhaps the most normalized way of avoiding our emotions is the easiest of all because, on the surface, it requires nothing, even if in the long run it might be the most toxic. Some call it “stonewalling” or “the silent treatment”; in other instances, “filibustering” or “redirection” might apply. These are just some of the ways we avoid emotions by changing the subject or simply not talking about it at all, ever. Usually, this form of conflict resolution avoids, or attempts to avoid, more immediate discomfort. The fear of disagreeing with a spouse or loved one. The anger that arises when needing to disagree with a boss or coworker. Even the shame that arises when needing to face a hard truth within ourselves. Silence was modeled by many men in my life as a way of avoiding more vulnerable feelings. Women aren’t off the hook with this too. I’ve seen many a relationship end because of a lack of willingness to share the more vulnerable truth underlying a disagreement.
A Therapeutic Realization
Writing this all out has been therapy for me. It’s highlighting that a vulnerable truth I’m avoiding is that I don’t always have the capacity to initiate reconciliation between myself and those who have starkly different views than me. There is joy in the realization of how deeply I care. There is sadness that arises when I’m out of ideas for what to do about it. Noticing and remaining present is my start.
Holidays bring up emotions, it’s natural to seek ways to manage them. Recognizing these normalized avoidance behaviors can help us slow down, be with, and address our emotions. Leveraging tools like our conversation prompts Actually Curious and training to strengthen emotional intelligence and management can help individuals stay present, navigate feelings, and contribute to more authentic and meaningful experiences.
Check out my recent feature on MSN “3 Ways Business Leaders Can Increase Their EQ — and Why They Should”
About Michael Tennant
Michael Tennant, CEO of Curiosity Lab is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and author of The Power of Empathy available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, and described by Inc. Magazine’s 100 NonObvious Business Books as “A Thirty-Day Path to Personal Growth and Social Change effectively balancing a self-help approach with a practical explanation of how we can use empathy as a tool.” He’s also the creator of Actually Curious™ the empathy conversation game, Values Exercise™, and the Five Phases of Empathy™. In 2022, Curiosity Lab received an investment from Pharrell and the Black Ambition Prize.
