Why We Avoid Difficult Emotions

When was the last time you found yourself scrolling through social media when you were upset? Or perhaps you threw yourself into work to avoid thinking about a painful situation? Maybe you’ve changed the subject when a conversation veered toward feelings that made you uncomfortable?

If these scenarios sound familiar, you’ve experienced a universal human tendency: the impulse to avoid difficult emotions. This avoidance is so common that most of us don’t even question it. We simply assume that sidestepping painful feelings is the natural, logical thing to do.

But why do we work so hard to escape uncomfortable emotions? Understanding the complex reasons behind emotional avoidance—and its unintended consequences—can transform your relationship with difficult feelings and ultimately lead to greater emotional well-being.

The Powerful Pull of Emotional Avoidance

Emotional avoidance refers to any action taken primarily to prevent, reduce, or escape uncomfortable feelings. This tendency is so deeply ingrained for most people that it operates largely outside conscious awareness:

The Many Faces of Avoidance

Emotional avoidance takes countless forms:

Distraction: Keeping busy, scrolling social media, or binge-watching shows
Numbing: Using substances, food, or other consumptions to dull feelings
Intellectualizing: Analyzing feelings rather than experiencing them
Suppression: Telling yourself to “just get over it” or “stop feeling that way”
Excessive positivity: Forcing optimism to cover difficult emotions
Avoidance behaviors: Steering clear of people, places, or topics that trigger feelings
Procrastination: Putting off tasks that evoke challenging emotions [1]

These diverse strategies share a common purpose: to create distance between you and uncomfortable emotional states.

The Immediate Rewards of Avoidance

Emotional avoidance persists because it works—at least in the short term:

Provides immediate relief from discomfort
Creates a sense of control over your emotional experience
Allows continued functioning during difficult situations
Receives social reinforcement in environments that discourage emotional expression
Conserves energy that dealing with emotions might require [2]

These short-term benefits make avoidance an appealing strategy, particularly in cultures that value composure and productivity over emotional processing.

The Evolutionary and Biological Basis of Avoidance

Our tendency to avoid difficult emotions isn’t random but has deep evolutionary and neurobiological roots:

The Threat Response System

The brain processes emotional discomfort similarly to physical threats:

The amygdala flags emotional distress as potential danger
Stress hormones activate to prepare for threat response
The prefrontal cortex gets overridden by more primitive brain regions
Avoidance behaviors get triggered as protection mechanisms
The reward system reinforces actions that reduce the perceived threat [3]

This threat-response framing helps explain why emotional avoidance can feel so automatic and compelling—your brain is literally trying to protect you from something it perceives as dangerous.

Energy Conservation Mechanisms

From an evolutionary perspective, conserving energy was crucial for survival:

Emotions require significant energy to process
Avoiding difficult feelings preserves resources for other needs
Humans evolved to minimize unnecessary energy expenditure
The path of least resistance provided survival advantages
Our brains still operate on these energy conservation principles

This biological drive toward efficiency makes the quick relief of avoidance particularly appealing compared to the energy investment of emotional processing.

Developmental and Social Learning

Beyond biology, our avoidance tendencies also develop through experience:

Early Learning About Emotions

Childhood experiences powerfully shape your relationship with feelings:

Caregivers’ responses to your emotions created templates for handling feelings
Certain emotions may have been met with punishment, rejection, or dismissal
You likely observed how adults around you managed their own emotions
Early environments may have rewarded emotional containment over expression
School settings often emphasized behavioral control over emotional processing [4]

These formative experiences create implicit “rules” about which emotions are acceptable and how they should be handled—rules that often favor avoidance over engagement.

Cultural and Social Influences

Broader social contexts reinforce avoidance patterns:

Many cultures value emotional restraint and “keeping it together”
Professional environments often discourage emotional expression
Media representations frequently model unhealthy avoidance strategies
Social norms create different emotional display rules for different groups
Modern emphasis on productivity leaves little space for emotional processing [5]

These pervasive messages create strong external incentives for emotional avoidance, making it seem like the normal, expected approach.

The Hidden Costs of Emotional Avoidance

While avoidance provides short-term relief, research consistently shows it creates significant long-term problems:

The Rebound Effect

Ironically, trying not to feel something often intensifies it:

Suppressed emotions typically return with greater intensity
Active avoidance actually increases attention to the avoided feeling
The effort required for suppression depletes mental resources
Avoiding feelings prevents their natural resolution process
What you resist tends to persist in your emotional life [6]

This rebound effect means that avoidance ultimately increases the very discomfort it was meant to decrease.

Physical Health Consequences

Chronic emotional avoidance affects your body in measurable ways:

Increased inflammation markers associated with various health conditions
Elevated stress hormones that affect multiple body systems
Greater physical tension that contributes to pain and discomfort
Compromised immune function leaving you more vulnerable to illness
Disrupted sleep patterns that further impact physical well-being

These physical effects demonstrate that even when emotions are successfully suppressed from awareness, they continue to affect bodily functioning.

Psychological Costs

Over time, avoidance contributes to various mental health challenges:

Increased vulnerability to anxiety and depression
Development of phobias and avoidance patterns
Reduced emotional awareness and regulation capacity
Diminished ability to tolerate normal emotional discomfort
Increased risk of post-traumatic stress following difficult events [7]

These psychological impacts occur because avoidance prevents the processing and integration necessary for emotional health.

Relationship Impact

Emotional avoidance significantly affects connection with others:

Reduced authenticity and intimacy in relationships
Difficulty communicating needs effectively
Missed opportunities for support and connection
Confusion or hurt feelings in others who sense your withdrawal
Relationship patterns that replicate earlier avoidance dynamics

These relational effects remind us that emotions serve important social functions that are disrupted when we consistently avoid them.

Limited Learning and Growth

Perhaps most fundamentally, avoidance prevents the learning that emotions facilitate:

Missing the information and guidance emotions provide
Reduced opportunity to develop emotional tolerance
Continued vulnerability to the same emotional triggers
Diminished self-knowledge about your needs and values
Missed chances for meaningful growth through challenge [8]

This stunted emotional development limits your capacity to navigate life’s inevitable challenges and transitions.

Specific Emotions We Most Commonly Avoid

While avoidance can target any uncomfortable feeling, certain emotions face particularly strong resistance:

Grief and Sadness

Grief receives especially strong avoidance responses:

Cultural messages frequently encourage “moving on” prematurely
The depth of grief can feel threatening to identity and functioning
Prolonged sadness often makes others uncomfortable, encouraging suppression
The unpredictable waves of grief can feel unmanageable
Sadness about what cannot be changed may seem pointless

Yet grief serves vital functions in processing loss and change—functions that avoidance interrupts.

Anger and Rage

Many people have complicated relationships with anger:

Early messages often discouraged anger expression, especially for certain groups
The intensity of anger can feel frightening or overwhelming
Concerns about harming relationships motivate anger suppression
Cultural conditioning may equate anger with loss of control
Previous regretted expressions of anger create wariness

Despite these concerns, anger provides important information about boundaries and needs that avoidance obscures.

Fear and Anxiety

Anxiety commonly triggers strong avoidance responses:

The physical discomfort of anxiety creates automatic aversion
Societal messaging equates courage with absence of fear
Anxious thoughts often focus on scenarios we feel powerless to address
The future orientation of anxiety makes it seem less concrete and manageable
The protective function of anxiety makes confronting it feel counterintuitive

Yet avoiding anxiety prevents developing the capacity to function effectively alongside normal fear responses.

Shame and Humiliation

Perhaps most powerfully avoided, shame creates particular challenges:

The global self-judgment in shame makes it especially painful
Shame’s isolating nature makes it difficult to process with others
Early experiences of humiliation create strong avoidance patterns
The sense of exposure in shame creates powerful protective reactions
Cultural messaging frequently uses shame as a control mechanism [9]

These factors make shame particularly difficult to approach, despite the healing that comes from bringing shame into the light of compassionate awareness.

Why Some Emotions Are Harder to Face Than Others

The difficulty in facing specific emotions varies based on several factors:

Intensity and Overwhelm

Some emotions simply feel more overwhelming:

The physiological intensity varies across different emotions
Personal sensitivity to specific physical sensations affects which emotions feel most challenging
Different emotions activate varying levels of nervous system arousal
Some emotions trigger memories or associations that intensify their impact
Certain feelings directly activate trauma responses in the body

Understanding these intensity differences helps explain why you might avoid certain emotions more strongly than others.

Lack of Skills or Models

Sometimes avoidance stems from not knowing how to handle specific feelings:

You may have had limited exposure to healthy expression of certain emotions
Different emotions require different regulation and processing skills
Some feelings lacked validation or guidance in your developmental environment
Cultural messages may have provided fewer models for certain emotional experiences
Educational settings rarely teach specific strategies for different emotional states

This skills gap explains why even people comfortable with some emotions might strongly avoid others.

Identity and Self-Concept Threats

Certain emotions conflict with how you see yourself:

Sadness might threaten an identity built around strength
Fear may conflict with a self-concept centered on courage
Anger might challenge a self-image based on kindness
Desire or longing could threaten independence-focused identity
Jealousy or envy might seem incompatible with being a “good person”

These identity conflicts create particularly strong motivation to avoid emotions that seem to contradict who you believe you should be.

Recognizing Your Own Avoidance Patterns

Awareness of your specific avoidance tendencies is the first step toward choice:

Common Signs of Avoidance

Several indicators suggest emotional avoidance might be operating:

Feeling numb or disconnected from your emotional experience
Finding yourself excessively busy with little downtime
Using substances, food, or activities to change how you feel
Physical symptoms that have no clear medical cause
Strong aversion to certain topics, situations, or conversations
Procrastinating on emotionally charged tasks or decisions
Intellectualizing experiences rather than feeling them [10]

These patterns don’t necessarily mean something is wrong—they simply indicate potential areas where avoidance may be limiting your emotional experience.

Personal Avoidance Inventory

Developing awareness of your specific patterns helps guide change:

Which emotions do you find most difficult to experience?
What are your go-to strategies when uncomfortable feelings arise?
In what situations do you notice yourself changing the subject or activity?
What did you learn about expressing different emotions growing up?
Which feelings seem most “dangerous” or threatening to you personally?

This self-knowledge creates a foundation for more conscious choices about how you relate to difficult emotions.

The Role of Self-Compassion

Approaching avoidance with judgment often backfires:

Criticizing yourself for avoidance adds another layer of negative emotion
Understanding the protective function of avoidance creates compassion
Recognizing the universality of avoidance reduces shame
Acknowledging that avoidance developed for good reasons decreases self-blame
Self-compassion creates the safety needed to approach difficult feelings

This compassionate stance supports exploration without creating additional reasons for avoidance.

Alternatives to Avoidance: Building Emotional Capacity

Moving beyond avoidance doesn’t mean eliminating all emotional regulation or constantly dwelling in difficult feelings. Instead, it involves developing greater choice and flexibility in your emotional life:

The Middle Path: Feel and Function

Healthy emotional processing involves neither avoidance nor drowning:

Acknowledging emotions without being overwhelmed by them
Creating space for feelings while maintaining daily functioning
Developing tolerance for discomfort without seeking immediate escape
Allowing natural emotional waves to rise and fall
Balancing emotional awareness with appropriate containment

This balanced approach honors emotions while recognizing that they’re one aspect of experience rather than the entirety.

Building the Emotion Muscles

Like physical strength, emotional capacity develops through practice:

Starting with more manageable emotional experiences before tackling the most difficult
Gradually increasing exposure to triggering situations with support
Developing specific skills for different emotional states
Creating safety nets for exploring challenging feelings
Celebrating progress in emotional tolerance and flexibility

This progressive approach respects your current capacity while supporting growth and development.

Mindful Awareness Practices

Mindfulness offers powerful tools for engaging differently with emotions:

Observing feelings with curiosity rather than judgment
Noticing the physical sensations that accompany emotions
Recognizing the temporary nature of emotional states
Creating space between emotional triggers and responses
Developing the capacity to be with discomfort without immediate reaction

These mindfulness skills help transform the relationship with difficult emotions from adversarial to observational.

Emotion as Information

Reframing emotions as messengers rather than enemies changes your approach:

Asking what each emotion might be trying to tell you
Exploring the needs or values underneath different feelings
Using emotions as guidance for decision-making and action
Viewing emotional discomfort as potentially meaningful rather than merely unpleasant
Appreciating the evolutionary wisdom in even difficult emotional states

This information-focused perspective helps extract the value from emotions rather than simply enduring or avoiding them.

Creating Supportive Contexts for Emotional Processing

While internal skills matter, external factors also influence your ability to work with difficult emotions:

Safe Relationship Containers

Certain relationship qualities support emotional processing:

Connections where vulnerability receives empathy rather than judgment
Relationships that can handle the full range of emotional expression
Spaces where emotions are neither dismissed nor dramatized
Regular opportunities for authentic emotional sharing
Feedback that validates rather than minimizes emotional experiences

These relational contexts create safety for exploring feelings that might otherwise remain avoided.

Environmental Factors

Your physical and temporal environment affects emotional capacity:

Creating physical spaces that feel safe for emotional experience
Establishing time in your schedule for emotional processing
Reducing external stressors that deplete emotional resources
Building in recovery periods after emotionally demanding experiences
Designing environments that support nervous system regulation

These environmental factors can either support emotional engagement or reinforce avoidance patterns.

Cultural and Community Support

Broader contexts significantly influence emotional patterns:

Finding communities where authentic emotional expression is valued
Seeking cultural practices that provide containers for difficult feelings
Creating new social norms that recognize the importance of emotional processing
Building collective wisdom about healthy emotional engagement
Supporting systems and policies that allow space for human emotional needs

These larger contexts help sustain individual efforts to move beyond avoidance.

When Professional Support Helps

While many avoidance patterns respond to self-help approaches, sometimes additional support proves beneficial:

Signs Additional Help Might Be Valuable

Consider professional support when:

Avoidance significantly impacts important areas of life
Attempts to change patterns haven’t been effective
Emotions connect to traumatic experiences
Physical symptoms related to emotional avoidance are severe
Avoidance includes thoughts of harm to self or others

These situations often benefit from the structure and expertise that professional guidance provides.

Finding the Right Approach

Various therapeutic modalities address emotional avoidance:

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) works directly with avoidance patterns
Emotion-Focused Therapy helps develop skills for processing specific emotions
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy builds awareness of emotional patterns
Somatic approaches address the bodily components of emotional avoidance
Psychodynamic therapy explores unconscious patterns underlying avoidance

Finding an approach and provider that matches your specific needs increases the likelihood of meaningful change.

The Spectrum of Healthy Emotional Engagement

Moving beyond the avoid-or-drown binary opens possibilities for a more nuanced relationship with emotions:

Situational Flexibility

Healthy emotional engagement involves context-appropriate choices:

Sometimes containing emotions temporarily for functioning
Other times creating deliberate space for deeper feeling
Adjusting emotional expression based on setting and relationship
Balancing present responsibilities with emotional processing needs
Developing discernment about when and how to engage with difficult feelings

This flexibility allows emotions to inform rather than override other important aspects of life.

Expanding Emotional Range

Beyond handling difficult emotions, emotional health includes broader capacity:

Experiencing the full spectrum of feelings, both comfortable and uncomfortable
Moving more fluidly between different emotional states
Accepting contradictory emotions that coexist within complex experiences
Differentiating between various emotional nuances
Finding meaning across the full range of human feeling

This expanded range creates a richer emotional life that doesn’t depend on avoiding discomfort.

Integration Rather Than Control

Perhaps most importantly, moving beyond avoidance involves integration:

Recognizing emotions as part of your experience rather than problems to solve
Allowing feelings to inform your understanding without controlling your choices
Experiencing emotions in your body while maintaining reflective awareness
Bringing compassionate presence to the full range of your emotional life
Creating internal hospitality for all parts of your emotional experience

This integrated approach transforms the relationship with emotions from adversarial to collaborative, allowing them to serve their natural functions in your life.

By understanding why we avoid difficult emotions and the unintended consequences of this avoidance, you can develop a more conscious relationship with your emotional life. This doesn’t mean eliminating all regulation or constantly dwelling in painful feelings. Rather, it involves creating space for emotions to deliver their messages and complete their natural cycles, ultimately supporting greater resilience, authenticity, and well-being.

References

National Institute of Mental Health. “Emotional Avoidance.” https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/caring-for-your-mental-health
Harvard Medical School. “The health benefits of emotional awareness.” https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/emotional-awareness-benefits
American Psychological Association. “Understanding emotion regulation.” https://www.apa.org/topics/emotions/regulation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Adverse Childhood Experiences.” https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html
National Institutes of Health. “Cultural Differences in Emotion Regulation.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4820376/
Mayo Clinic. “The Effects of Emotional Suppression.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950
Mental Health America. “Healthy vs. Harmful Coping Skills.” https://mhanational.org/helpful-vs-harmful-ways-manage-emotions
National Alliance on Mental Illness. “The Importance of Emotional Processing.” https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/November-2020/Why-I-Talk-About-My-Depression
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. “Emotional Regulation.” https://www.samhsa.gov/homelessness-programs-resources/hpr-resources/empowering-change
National Center for Biotechnology Information. “Emotional Avoidance and Health.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175745/