Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles: Breaking the Anxiety Cycle
Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles
The anxiety cycle can feel like an endless loop—a constant, never-ending spiral that you can’t seem to escape. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve found yourself trapped in this cycle. It’s an incredibly common struggle in my Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles practice, especially among first-generation BIPOC individuals and Queer folx. The struggle to navigate your own emotional world, in the context of an anxiety cycle, can feel isolating and overwhelming, but you’re not alone.
How Avoidance Plays a Key Role in Your Anxiety
The anxiety cycle can feel like an endless loop—a constant, never-ending spiral that you can’t seem to escape. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve found yourself trapped in this cycle. It’s an incredibly common struggle in my Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles practice, especially among first-generation BIPOC individuals and Queer folx. The struggle to navigate your own emotional world, in the context of an anxiety cycle, can feel isolating and overwhelming, but you’re not alone.
In my previous post, Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles - What is Your Anxiety Cycle?, I introduced the idea that anxiety often revolves around negative thought patterns. These thoughts—those “what if’s” and “what’s the point?”—feed the cycle and keep you stuck. We explored how emotional disconnection and individual patterns of anxiety show up in your life. By understanding your unique anxiety cycle, you can begin the process of breaking free.
In this post, we’re diving deeper into one of the most common factors that fuels anxiety: avoidance. If you find yourself constantly running from your feelings, distracting yourself with busy work, or zoning out to avoid facing the emotions that make you anxious, then this post is for you. Let’s talk about why avoidance is anxiety's best friend and how it plays a crucial role in keeping you stuck in the cycle.
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What is Avoidance, and Why Does it Matter in Your Anxiety Cycle?
Avoidance is defined as actively staying away from something that feels difficult, scary, or uncomfortable. When we’re anxious, it’s common to engage in avoidance behaviors as a coping mechanism. However, avoidance is a short-term relief, a bandaid that only covers up the deeper emotional wounds we’re avoiding.
You’ve probably experienced it: the days when you’re so busy doing everything—work, running errands, checking off tasks—that by the time the day ends, you realize you’ve been moving non-stop. But despite the full calendar, you’re left feeling drained, uneasy, or emotionally disconnected. The anxious feeling creeps in, leaving you on edge and unable to truly rest. Maybe you toss and turn at night, unable to quiet your mind because you’ve been avoiding something all day long.
Avoidance feels like a temporary escape. It’s an attempt to cope with anxiety by pushing it away—often through distraction, busyness, or mind-numbing activities. But while avoidance gives the illusion of relief, it doesn’t address the root cause of the anxiety. In fact, it just perpetuates the cycle by keeping you from facing your feelings head-on.
As a therapist working with BIPOC and Queer folx in Los Angeles, I often see how avoidance shows up in the cultural context. Many of us in the BIPOC community have been raised in environments where emotional expression was often not encouraged, or where our parents simply didn’t have the tools to help us navigate complex emotions. In some families, avoidance becomes a learned behavior, passed down through generations. Distractions like work, TV, or other forms of entertainment were often the ways our parents coped with their own feelings of anxiety, stress, or emotional overwhelm. So, when we become adults, we find ourselves repeating these patterns without realizing how they affect our mental health.
Avoidance becomes a coping mechanism because it’s something that feels familiar. It’s easier to stay busy than to confront emotions that feel overwhelming. But here's the kicker: if we don’t face those emotions, we can't process them, and we can't heal.
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Are you engaging in Avoidance? Let’s Dig Deeper
Now that we’ve established that avoidance is a key player in your anxiety cycle, let’s take a closer look at how it shows up in your life. Are you engaging in avoidance behaviors without even realizing it? Let’s explore some signs and patterns you might notice in your daily life.
Constantly Staying Busy Do you find yourself always doing something? Running errands, working long hours, or filling up your time with distractions—only to realize you’ve been going non-stop all day? It might feel productive, but if you’re not taking time to be present with your feelings, you’re avoiding them. That constant busyness often keeps you from dealing with the uncomfortable emotions that anxiety brings up.
Restlessness When You’re Not Busy When you finally have a moment of peace—whether it’s sitting still for a few minutes or having a quiet evening—do you feel uneasy, restless, or agitated? Does the thought of not being “productive” make you anxious? This feeling is a big clue that avoidance is at play. When you don’t have something to distract you, the anxiety you’ve been avoiding can resurface, causing discomfort.
Emotional Numbness or Disconnection If you feel emotionally disconnected from yourself or others, it could be a sign that you’ve been avoiding your feelings for a long time. This emotional numbness is your mind’s way of protecting you from overwhelming emotions, but it also keeps you stuck in the anxiety cycle. When you avoid facing your emotions, you’re unable to process them, and they continue to linger in your subconscious, waiting to resurface when least expected.
Difficulty Slowing Down Do you struggle with sitting still? Whether it's watching TV, reading a book, or simply taking a break, do you feel like you always need to be doing something? When you can’t seem to slow down, it could be that you’re avoiding the uncomfortable emotions that come with being still. Taking a moment to reflect or check in with yourself can be unsettling, so you distract yourself instead.
Procrastination If you consistently put off important tasks or avoid dealing with things that make you anxious—like confronting a difficult conversation or handling a challenging work project—you may be engaging in avoidance. Procrastination often comes from a place of fear or anxiety about facing a situation, so the longer you avoid it, the more anxious you become.
Why Avoidance Feels So Familiar for BIPOC and Queer Folx
As I mentioned earlier, avoidance is a coping mechanism that is often passed down through generations, especially in the BIPOC community. Many of us were raised in environments where emotional expression wasn’t prioritized or even allowed. The idea of discussing feelings openly was often avoided—either because it was seen as a weakness or because our parents themselves didn’t have the emotional tools to teach us how to deal with complex feelings. Growing up, we might have been taught to “push through” difficult emotions, or we were told that we needed to focus on “practical” things like work, school, or family obligations. These strategies became ingrained in us as normal, and we carried them into adulthood. But these strategies don’t help us process anxiety; instead, they perpetuate it.
Avoidance not only disconnects us from our emotions, but it also affects our relationships. If we don’t know how to process our feelings, it’s harder to connect intimately with others. Emotional intimacy—the ability to be open and vulnerable—is blocked when we avoid our emotions. In my post on Anxiety Therapy and Emotional Intimacy, I discuss how anxiety and emotional avoidance keep us from experiencing true connection. Without facing our emotions, we are disconnected both from ourselves and the people around us.
In my practice, I work with first-generation BIPOC individuals and Queer folx who are struggling with anxiety and avoidance behaviors. Together, we unpack these cultural patterns and work toward developing healthier ways to cope with anxiety. If you’re part of a community where avoidance has been a learned behavior, it can be incredibly challenging to break free. But it’s possible, and it starts with awareness and self-compassion.
Breaking the Cycle: What You Can Do About Avoidance
So, how do you begin to break free from the avoidance-anxiety cycle? The first step is increasing your awareness of your avoidance behaviors. Start by noticing when you engage in avoidance and what the triggers are. Is there a specific situation, person, or emotion that you’re avoiding? By pinpointing the source of your anxiety, you can begin to address it in a healthier way.
Here are a few practical steps to help you cope with anxiety and reduce avoidance behaviors:
Mindfulness and Grounding Techniques Take a moment each day to practice mindfulness. Sit quietly, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. Pay attention to how your body feels in the present moment. This simple practice can help you slow down and stay connected to your emotions rather than avoiding them. It’s a small step that can help you stay grounded when anxiety begins to creep in.
Journaling Prompts One of the most effective ways to begin addressing avoidance is through journaling. Take some time each day to write down your thoughts and feelings. This can help you identify patterns in your anxiety and gain clarity on what you’re avoiding. You can use the journaling prompts from my previous post, Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles - What is Your Anxiety Cycle?, to help guide your reflections. Writing about your emotions can be a great way to process them and begin breaking the cycle of avoidance.
Therapy and Support Therapy is a powerful tool in helping you understand and address avoidance behaviors. Working with a therapist can help you gain insight into your anxiety and create a roadmap for breaking free from the cycle. In therapy, you can explore the root causes of your anxiety and learn healthier ways to cope with difficult emotions. If you’re ready to start, I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation, and I’d be honored to help you begin your healing journey. Call me at (323) 493-6644 for a free consultation today or book a session with me here.
Small Steps Toward Facing Your Fears Avoidance doesn’t have to be tackled all at once. Start small. Identify one situation or feeling that you’ve been avoiding and take small steps toward facing it. You don’t have to dive into the deep end right away. Progress is about taking one step at a time.
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Ready to Break the Anxiety Cycle?
Understanding why we engage in avoidance is the first step in breaking free from the anxiety cycle. It’s essential to recognize how avoidance keeps us stuck and to begin practicing new coping strategies that allow us to process our feelings. In my Anxiety Therapy Los Angeles practice, we explore these behaviors, help identify triggers, and work toward embracing emotional intimacy. You can read more about how emotional intimacy plays a role in healing from anxiety in my blog post, Anxiety Therapy and Emotional Intimacy, here.
By learning to sit with our feelings and be vulnerable, we can move forward in a healthier way, reducing anxiety and building deeper connections with ourselves and others. If you’re ready to break the cycle of avoidance and anxiety, I invite you to call me at (323) 493-6644 for a free consultation today or book a session with me here.
Let’s break the cycle together!
Wishing you peace and healing on your journey!
Ligia Orellana, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Ligia Orellana LMFT 122659 Anxiety Therapist Los Angeles, California
