feeling helpless | The Warm Milk Journal

Avoidance: a robber of sleep and producer of anxiety

Published April 16, 2012 | By Debra

What have you been avoiding lately? A drawer full of unpaid bills? Filing your taxes? Asking the boss for that much deserved raise? Making that medical appointment?

When we practice avoidance we are inviting anxiety into our lives. How?

1. The things we are putting off doing don’t magically go away (and we know this).

2. It creates and prolongs any worry about these things

3. It gives our minds plenty of time to blow things up and out of proportion.

4. Avoidance makes us feel weak and not very good about ourselves.

5. During that “witching hour” we spoke about in our prior post, it is these things that we are avoiding that get churned about over and over again when all we desperately want to do is not think at all and sleep!

Taking action is a confidence booster and sleep producer.

Pulling our heads out of the sand and dealing with our issues and challenges will give us many benefits including:

1. We will feel greatly empowered. Even little steps will make us feel so much better about ourselves and the situation (call the Student loan company, pull those bills that have been piling up in the drawer, initiate that conversation with your spouse, etc.)

2. Once we start taking steps towards resolution rather than avoidance, so much free time and energy is freed up to live our lives, be in the present rather than worrying.

3. The magnitude of what we perceived as our problems will be much deflated once we start dealing with them.

4. We will get some perspective and realize things aren’t as bad as we thought.

5. Peace of mind will return (along with a good night sleep).