Floor By Floor: Anxiety and Avoidance Behaviours
When I think about anxiety, I think about elevators.
Stick with me. I think this will make sense.
My wife lived on the 27th floor of a downtown Toronto condo building when we first met, so every visit started with an elevator ride about 300 or so feet straight up to her door.
I come back to this often when I’m working with clients who are struggling with anxiety, and wonder how different my life might have been if I had been anxious about elevators. More specifically, what if I had been anxious to the point of avoiding elevators altogether?
Avoidance behaviours are one of the most common ways anxiety shows up in our lives. While they offer short-term relief, they often reinforce fear and make anxiety worse over time, often interfering in our lives in both subtle and significant ways. Understanding the anxiety–avoidance cycle is a key step in learning how to break it.
The Rules and Recruitment of Anxiety
In narrative therapy, we often talk about the rules and recruitment of problems. What does the problem tell you to do or not do (the rules) and how does it convince you, or sell you on doing this (the recruitment).
With anxiety, the rule is almost always some version of “avoid.”
Sidestep the hard conversation.
Leave public speaking to others.
Don't let people down.
Stay away from crowds.
Never drive on the highway.
Don’t apply for the job.
Stay off the elevator.
You get the idea.
The recruitment is often a version of the same thing too - if you avoid, you’ll stay safe.
Avoidance Behaviours
And that’s how avoidance behaviours are born. Avoidance behaviours are anything we do to escape something that makes us anxious. They're actions that soothe us and bring relief in the moment, but quietly make the anxiety stronger over time. Here’s how Psychology Today puts it:
Avoidance behavior refers to any act that allows a person to avoid a situation that triggers their anxiety. Those who engage in this behavior tend to avoid anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, from situations, interactions, and responsibilities, to emotions, feelings, and thoughts… Long-term avoidance, however, can actually increase anxiety and reinforce fears. Avoidance behaviors can negatively impact a person’s quality of life.
Whenever I talk about avoidance in session, I think about a version of my life where elevators felt dangerous. In that version, I wouldn't step into the elevator at my wife's condo. I would take the stairs, each and every time.
The rule would be clear-cut: don’t take the elevator, take the stairs instead.
The recruitment would be even clearer: if you take the stairs, you’ll be safe. If you avoid the elevator, you’ll live.
Two things would happen every time I follow the rule:
I wouldn't die in an elevator crash.
The belief that the elevator is dangerous, and that my safety depends on avoiding it, would be reinforced over and over again.
In other words, every time I climb the stairs - and avoid the elevator - I would strengthen the belief that the elevator is inherently dangerous and that I need to keep taking the stairs if I want to survive, regardless of whether or not this is true.
It doesn’t matter how unlikely or unrealistic that fear is - in the hundreds of times I rode that elevator I don't remember a single problem (though riding with some of the resident dogs triggered my allergies occasionally). What matters is that when we follow the rules of anxiety and engage in avoidance behaviours the belief gets stronger, making the anxiety more and more persuasive, and more and more in control.
Here’s how the anxiety–avoidance cycle works:
Avoid → feel relief → reinforce the fear → avoid again
Avoidance is effective in the short term. It brings instant relief. That’s why it sticks.
But it teaches us that we need to avoid the things we are afraid of in order to be okay. And this can come at a huge cost if those fears keep us from the things that are important to us.
At the end of the day, whether or not I feel comfortable in an elevator is more or less trivial. What matters, however, is how that fear would have negatively impacted my relationship. This is how avoidance behaviours can become especially insidious, damaging, and - in big and small ways - potentially life altering.
Going Through, Not Around
One of the most reliable ways to challenge these beliefs and loosen the grip of avoidance is simply to begin moving through the thing we’ve been avoiding, slowly and intentionally. Not all at once. But deliberately.
Let’s bring that metaphor back. If I had been terrified of that elevator, I wouldn’t have started by going up 27 floors - this wouldn’t have worked. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, and my attempt to progress likely would have failed.
Instead, maybe I’d start by stepping inside and jumping out before the doors close.
Then maybe a week later I’d go up one floor.
Then two.
And on and on, floor by floor, until I could ride all 27 floors at once.
We can begin moving past unhelpful anxieties by going inch by inch, or floor by floor. When we step just outside our comfort zones, taking meaningful but achievable steps forward, we begin to challenge the belief that avoidance is the only thing keeping us safe.
The Value of Values
This will feel uncomfortable. But we don’t take these risks just for the sake of it. We do it because it matters.
We do it because it gets us closer to what we value. The elevator itself doesn't matter. But the relationship does.
Values - the things we believe in, that are important to us, and we want for our lives - give us a reason to tolerate discomfort, and motivation to move through fear and take risks. This is why Identifying which values are on the other side of the fear goes a long way in empowering us to take meaningful risks. Being able to ride an elevator, drive on the highway, or tolerate crowds are not rewarding in and of themselves. But overcoming these anxieties can bring us closer to what we want in, and for our lives. This is the reward that makes the risk worthwhile.
As Susan David says, “discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” When something matters to us - and is in line with what we want and who we want to be - we’re more willing to take a step towards it, even when that step feels risky.
Because at the end of the day, it’s about more than just an elevator. It’s about moving past the obstacles between us and what is important to us.
Avoidance promises safety, but it often delivers limitations, and keeps us from the things that are important to us. Facing fear doesn’t guarantee comfort, but it opens up possibilities - a relationship. A career move. A conversation that changes something. A life that gets a little more meaningful.
Breaking free from avoidance behaviours doesn’t happen all at once. But by understanding how the anxiety–avoidance cycle works, and taking small, values-driven steps forward, it’s possible to build a life that feels bigger, not smaller.
All because, at some point, you decided to step into the elevator.
