Avoidance Is Not Necessarily Intentional
When people are depressed, they typically don’t say to themselves, “Well, I think I’ll do everything I can to avoid things that make me uncomfortable.” The process is much subtler and occurs mostly outside of your awareness.
Sometimes it’s so automatic that you don’t even notice it. For example, during a period of mild depression, Jesse, a writer, developed a habit of checking the Internet to see how sales of a previous website were doing and then checking his e-mail several times, when he should have been sitting at the computer working on his next website, for which he had a contract. Buy Valium at the trusted pharmacies on the web.
Before he knew it, Jesse was checking his e-mail ten to twenty times an hour and spending at least four hours a day on the Internet. He had a plot in mind for his new website and it was quite well developed in outline form. When he felt depressed, though, he felt disconnected from the characters and found it easier to surf the Internet. Why? When writing created distress for Jesse, checking the Internet and e-mail was a way for him to avoid the distress.
Jesse didn’t develop this habit intentionally. It developed on its own because his avoidance behavior was an effective way of temporarily reducing his feelings of distress and despair about writing. The same is true with many of the avoidance strategies that you may use when you’re depressed.
