are we in our avoidant era?

you're not alone in wanting to be left alone.

I noticed it in myself, first.

It started with small things like seeing my friends less, or catching myself fantasizing about leaving a party before I even got there. Then it became more dramatic, like no longer doing things that I used to enjoy, like listening to the news, watching new movies and having less tolerance for people whose opinions I don’t agree with. I wasn’t turning into a hermit— I was turning into a predictability junky. The more unfamiliar an activity was going to be, the less I wanted to partake in it. The less it involved other people, the more I looked forward to it.

But as it turns out I wasn’t alone, in wanting to be left alone.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

Almost half of Americans confess that they’re "less sociable" than they were even a few years ago. A growing number of us now prefer to be single and want to live alone. Every age group without exception, is having less and less sex. Even our attachment styles have begun to morph, reflecting a newfound preference towards isolation. Researchers have discovered that the amount of securely attached people has actually dropped down by 15%, and that the share of avoidantly-attached people have increased by 56%. That’s even after controlling for age, gender and race. So if you feel like you’re encountering more avoidants whether it’s at work or in the dating pool, and that perhaps you’ve noticed you have become that way too, you’re not imagining things.

We’ve officially entered our avoidant era.

For many people, avoidance coping shows up as heightened levels of anxiety. Because our tolerance for discomfort is at an all-time low, we’re experiencing more stress from everyday situations. I know that for me, it’s shown up as a more acute sensitivity to sound. If I leave the house without earphones now, I panic. For you, it might show up as minor inconveniences that may have felt innocuous in the past, which now produce heightened anxiety. That’s why we’ve seen so many people freak out on planes, or even in more neutral spaces, like grocery stores.

And even when we do accept to leave the house, we’re far pickier about who we spent time with. We’re witnessing a generation of young people who are less tolerant than their parents (and even their grand-parents) which is surprising. Being young is usually a time to be more open-minded and flexible, not less. And yet, I recognize myself in these statistics, even though I’ve actively tried to make a career out of talking to the other side. When a person expresses an opinion that I disagree with, I find it hard to get past it, and not let it taint the entire relationship, especially in light of recent global unrest and conflict. We’ve seen people get dumped with or even fired because someone didn’t agree with their opinion. We’re quick to cut people out, in the name of having “boundaries.”

But before we freak out about the demise of our species, let’s have a little compassion for ourselves. As the world becomes scarier, we’ve managed through it by making our worlds smaller and smaller. I don’t see it as a flaw, as much as a coping mechanism that many of us have developed in the face of a chronically chaotic world. The amount of loss, grief and change that we’ve had to process is not normal. The fact that you’re having trouble functioning in a dysfunctional world, is not proof that you’re broken, it’s proof that you’re human. The last ten years have been proper bananas. A global pandemic, followed by global unrest, two wars, live-streamed ethnic cleansing, a recession and record-inflation, would be enough to turn any completely healthy person into a nut job, at least temporarily. So we must remain kind with ourselves.

Seeking predictability in the short-term might make us feel better in the moment, but it only confirms the false belief that our avoidance coping is the best strategy for our well-being, when it’s not.

One way to leave our avoidant era behind, is to develop what’s called distress tolerance tools. Practically, becoming more securely attached can be done by taking yourself through these six steps.

1-Stop avoiding the fact that you’re avoiding. If you made it through this article, you’ve done most of the work! You’ve recognized there’s an issue and you’re developing self-awareness around it, which is the hardest step. Now you’ll be on the lookout and start catching yourself the next time you do it.

2-Label that shit. Be specific. Are you feeling sad, angry, fearful, disappointed? Consider printing a feelings wheel and keeping it at hand on your desk or on your bathroom mirror, so that you can identify how you feel on a more granular level. If you see something disturbing online, don’t keep swiping to distract yourself, step away from your phone and process what you’re feeling.

3-Talk, dance or punch it out. Whatever feelings arise, find a way to channel them. This can be done by sharing them with a friend, a community of people, a support group, or using art or journaling to process it on your own. You don’t have to call a friend every single time you feel disturbed, sometimes you can just punch a pillow, or blast your favorite song and go for a hot girl walk. Whatever you do, resist the urge to bottle up what’s going on inside of you.

4-Instead of thinking yourself out of avoidance, act yourself out of it. It’s clear that many of us have become accustomed to disconnecting to survive. And while I’m pro-rotting in bed all day when it’s necessary, forcing ourselves to do things, rather than just think things, is a necessary part of our collective healing. For me this looks like planning my social events, like my workouts—in advance! If I leave it up to the last minute, I’ll find a plentiful reasons to stay home. When it’s planned ahead, I rarely regret it. And notice how you feel after you spend time with people, and who you feel replenished by. Plan your life around spending more time with the people who make you feel like isolating the least.

5-Develop something called psychologically flexibility. Stretch your brain the same way you would stretch your muscles. One way to do this is to find silver linings when you’re frustrated by something happening that you didn’t predict. Last year, I started having health problems and while it was no cake walk, I focussed on how much healthier it forced me to eat and how much more connected I became to my body as a result of my illness.

6-Become besties with uncertainty. This one probably deserves its own separate essay, so if you want me to write about this more at length, let me know, but the gist here is to get comfy with tiny uncertainties. This means programming your life so that you have more encounters that you can’t predict, and reflect on the fact that no one died when you took part in them! It means, showing up at a new workout class, joining a reading or running club, or just forcing yourself to have a conversation with a stranger even if you don’t feel like it.

I hope this helps you. Let me know how your avoidant patterns show up and how you’ve managed to create more loving habits for yourself.

x

Liz-