Patrones de Diseño

Avoidance is not doing something because it makes you fearful or anxious. We first looked at avoidance in Part One, Section 2, page 14. It is one of the more extreme versions of keeping safe. There are many kinds of avoidance, and some of them are easier to recognize than others. Examples of obvious types of avoidance include:

• Not going to places where you know you will meet people

• Not using the telephone

• Not eating in public or asking questions

• Not speaking to strangers

• Not asking someone out for a date

• Refusing invitations.

And there are many others.

More subtle types of avoidance are so familiar, and so much part and parcel of the way people behave when they are socially anxious, that often they are not even aware of doing them. They include not starting conversations or not initiating contact with people; not accepting a challenge; or never doing things on your own.

Some people become very good at skimming the surface of social situations, and might make a habit of arriving at them late and leaving early. At a party you could still subtly avoid talking to people by helping with the food and drink, or with the clearing up, and find a way of only half paying attention to other people.

Bob, who had severe social phobia, described this as being

‘both there and not there’, and for him it happened whenever he was with a group of people who were talking among themselves.

He wanted to be part of the conversation, and to feel that he belonged to the group and was accepted by them. But he still disengaged himself, and felt detached for much of the time. Perhaps you know what he meant.

Experiments for facing things rather than avoiding them

The same four steps we used for giving up safety behaviours can also be used to plan how to face rather than avoid the things that you find difficult:

1 Identify what you avoid.

2 Make a prediction. Link your avoidance with what you think would happen if you stopped avoiding.

3 Do something differently: in this case, face the fear rather than avoid it.

4 Evaluate what happens. Think about what happened, as objectively as you can. Then work out whether your thoughts about what might happen were right.

Step 1: Identify what you avoid

The first step sounds relatively easy, and often it is. However, when thinking about precisely what you avoid, remember that you are probably the only person who knows exactly what that is, and how you manage to avoid it. Try to notice when you feel like avoiding something, and when you get that sense of wanting to withdraw or hide yourself away that leads to avoidance. A good test of whether you are avoiding something or not is to ask: ‘If I were confident, would I do it?’

Write down here some of the things you avoid.

Step 2: Predict what would happen

The second step involves asking yourself what you predict, or expect might happen if you did the thing you are avoiding. In this way you’ll be able to identify how the way you think links up with your avoidance.

What is your worst fear? Do you have any memories or images about similar situations that explain why they seem to you to be so alarming? The key questions for identifying thoughts may be useful here; see Section 3, page 47.

Write down your prediction or fear here.

Step 3: Face your fear

The third step, facing the fear rather than avoiding it, is always the hardest. Often it helps to build your confidence up by doing easier things before you move on to harder ones.

You could start by greeting people when you meet them and build up to full-length conversations. Or you could start by listening

to others and watching what they do, and build up to asking someone out for a date. Or you could involve yourself in helpful activities in your local neighbourhood, or join an evening class, as a step on the way to making more personal relationships and better friendships. Your aim should be to be able to do the thing that you are avoiding.

Write down here ways in which you could face your fear.

Step 4: Assessing what happened The fourth step has two parts:

1 Observing what actually happened

2 Working out how this fits with what you originally thought.

It is only too easy to dismiss or to discount the things that happen as a result of carrying out experiments, especially if nothing in particular goes wrong. If you managed to do something new for you, like make an appointment to get your hair cut, then it is easy to think of

this as the kind of normal activity that should present you with no particular problems.

This is why it is so important to identify your predictions about what might happen before you go ahead and do something that you might not otherwise do. Doing it this way allows you to find out whether your predictions are confirmed or not.

For example, you might expect to feel embarrassed and humiliated by having to watch yourself in the mirror while having your hair cut, or predict that the person cutting your hair will make a personal remark about you, or ask you personal questions. If you know exactly what you expect to happen, you can find out whether your expectations are confirmed or were wrong.

In this way, doing things differently can help to change the way you think as well as to change what you do. Next time your expectations and predictions, based on your new findings, should be different.

Write down here what actually happened in your first experiment.

How does it compare with your prediction?