The Allure of Avoidance
A reflection on why we turn away, what it costs us, and the unexpected peace found on the other side.
Avoidance is one of humanity’s oldest survival skills.
It’s quiet, soft, and often disguised as wisdom, emotional maturity, or boundaries.
“I’m choosing peace.”
“Now isn’t the right time.”
“I don’t want to make things worse.”
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“I don’t do drama.”
“I just need some space.”
But avoidance never makes anything disappear. It waits. It circles.
It grows roots beneath the surface of our lives until one day we trip over what we swore we’d stepped around.
For most of my adult life, avoidance was far too familiar.
It felt safer than truth, quieter than conflict, and easier than change. It gave me the illusion of control—the gentle lie that if I stayed silent long enough, things would somehow resolve themselves.
But silence has a price.
The biggest avoidance of my life was a relationship I stayed in long after my soul whispered it was time to go. I kept hoping, praying, bargaining. I told myself that love meant endurance, that loyalty meant staying, even when the cost of staying was myself. Every time my intuition rose up, I pushed it down. Every time the truth tried to surface, I smoothed it over. I chose what I thought was peace, even though it was slowly breaking me.
Avoidance becomes a form of self-abandonment when we use it to protect a version of life that no longer exists.
It wasn’t until the psychic and emotional weight became unbearable that the truth broke through anyway—as truth always does. Leaving wasn’t a graceful step; it was a collapse. A rupture. A moment that cost me years of healing. But that rupture was also a beginning. The doorway back to myself. It gave me the space and capacity to know what I wanted and no longer wanted in my life.
So when my now-husband came into my world, I was ready. We were ready.
Avoidance isn’t necessary when we feel safe; and I feel safer than I ever have.
Avoidance doesn’t save us from pain.
It delays it until it becomes something else entirely.
This pattern shows up everywhere.
In early 2024, I avoided what I believed would be a series of small but difficult conversations with someone I cared for deeply. I felt hurt, but I swallowed it for months—honestly, for a couple of years—telling myself I didn’t want to lose them or disrupt the connection. I kept the peace on the outside while chaos built on the inside.
Eventually, the weight of what I was holding erupted. Not in wisdom, not in clarity, but in overwhelm. And that relationship hasn’t recovered. They haven’t spoken to me since. I understand why. Avoidance robbed both of us of a gentler parting or a reconciliation.
Sometimes the cost of not saying what needs to be said is the relationship we hoped silence would protect.
Avoidance feels peaceful until it becomes corrosive.
It feels protective until it tightens like a vice around your chest.
It feels harmless until it becomes harmful.
And as we move into a season of gatherings, traditions, and old roles, avoidance becomes even more tempting. We stay quiet to keep the peace. We sidestep topics we need to face. We shrink to fit the room. We choose comfort over truth and call it compassion.
But the love we’re longing for—integrity, safety, intimacy, clarity—cannot coexist with avoidance.
Avoidance is the illusion of harmony.
Truth is the doorway to the real thing.
One thing my breathwork practice has taught me again and again is this:
the only way out is through.
Avoidance keeps us suspended in a loop that never completes.
Completion—whether it arrives as resolution, release, a conversation, a boundary, or an ending—only comes when we move through what’s asking to be faced. That path looks different for each of us. There is no single right way to navigate discomfort, only the honest one.
And it feels important to say this clearly:
Moving through does not mean returning to people who have caused harm.
It does not mean repairing what was abusive.
It does not mean offering access to those who violated trust, safety, or your humanity.
Avoidance and protection are not the same thing.
Cutting a cord is not avoidance; it is self-respect.
Refusing to reconnect with someone who harmed you is not bypassing; it is wisdom.
I would never ask anyone to re-enter fires they’ve already survived.
As a trauma-informed coach, a breathwork facilitator, and someone who has lived through my own cycles of harm, I know that completing a chapter often requires distance, sovereignty, and closure that happens privately, not relationally.
Facing the truth doesn’t always mean facing the person.
Sometimes the truth is simply acknowledging what happened and reclaiming your freedom from it.
What I’ve learned through breathwork, through coaching others, through witnessing the deepest human fears in sacred spaces, is this:
People don’t avoid truth because they’re fragile.
They avoid it because somewhere in their past, truth came with consequences.
So we learn to stall.
We learn to swallow truths that might disrupt the room.
We learn to smile instead of speak.
We learn to carry things alone.
But what we refuse to face will always find its way back to us.
Avoidance is never a final answer.
It is a holding pattern.
And holding patterns—especially emotional ones—are exhausting.
Real peace comes from presence.
From saying the quiet thing out loud.
From honoring your discomfort instead of trying to outrun it.
From telling the truth the first time instead of the last.
From letting endings happen when they need to.
From trusting that what is meant to remain cannot be lost through honesty.
Avoidance promises safety.
Presence delivers freedom.
And sometimes freedom looks like telling the truth even if your voice shakes.
Sometimes it looks like leaving.
Sometimes it looks like returning to the conversation you’ve been avoiding with yourself.
So if you feel something rising in you this season—an unsaid thing, an unasked question, a truth tapping gently and then not-so-gently at your ribs—know this:
It’s not coming back to punish you.
It’s coming back to liberate you.
Reflection Prompt
What truth have you been circling that is still waiting for you to turn toward it?
I’d love to hear what this brought up for you.
Your reflections are part of the medicine, and every voice adds to the remembering of our collective sovereignty.
If this reflection stirred something within you, consider sharing it with someone who’s walking their own path of becoming. The ripples begin when we share the light we’ve found.
If you’re new here, welcome. I started Reflections from the Temple to be a space for those returning to their center — one breath, one truth, one remembrance at a time. Subscribe to receive each new reflection directly in your inbox.
This is poetic brilliance about one of the many prisons we construct for ourselves. Well done!