SUMMARY: Quite often, my clients forget to recognize avoidance as a compulsion.  While you might be spending a lot of time in your recovery reducing compulsions such as reassurance-seeking compulsions, behavioral compulsions, and mental compulsions, it is important to recognize that avoidance is also a compulsion.  In this episode, we address why it is important to address the things you are avoiding and find a way to incorporate this into your OCD treatment. In This Episode: Why Avoiding your fear keeps you stuck in the obsessive-compulsive cycle What is an avoidant compulsions? How to manage avoidant compulsions? Links To Things I Talk About: ERP SCHOOL Other podcast episodes about avoidance Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more. Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two). EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 210. Welcome back, everybody. I am so thrilled to have you here. How are you doing? How is your anxiety? How is your depression? How is your heart? How is your grief? How is your anger? How is your joy? How are you? How is your family? All things that I hope are okay and tender, and there’s a safe place for all of those things to be. Today’s episode is in inspiration of a session I recently had with a client—a client I’ve seen for some time. We are constantly talking about safety behaviors, ways that we respond to fear. I had mentioned to him that of course, one of the safety behaviors we do are from fear, and in response to fear is avoidance. We avoid things. And he had said, “Oh, I completely forgot about avoidance. I completely forgot that was one of my safety behaviors.” Sometimes we put so much attention on the physical behaviors and the mental compulsions that we forget to check in on what are you avoiding and how avoiding things and fear keep us stuck. So, that’s what we’re talking about today. Before we do that, let’s first do the review of the week. This is from Ks Steven, and they said: “Short and sweet. This podcast is one of my highlights of the week. It is short, sweet and so helpful. I look forward to each new episode. Episode 99 on self-compassion has transformed my relationship with myself. As I start each day to face my obsessions, I remind myself it is a beautiful day to do hard things.” I love that review. Thank you so much. I love that. It basically is exactly what I want this podcast to be. I want it to be short, I want it to be sweet, I want it to be helpful, and I want it to remind you that it is always a beautiful day to do hard things. Before we get into the episode, we have one more part of the episode that we want to do, which is the “I did a hard thing,” and this is from Anonymous. They said: “My husband and I have been going through infertility treatments for years. This year, we did IVF and it was triggering, maybe because it felt more “real.” I was panicking that I didn’t feel perfect enough since I struggled with some mental health issues earlier this year. I had the false narrative in my mind and major intrusive thoughts about not being a good mom, ruining my children, fearing postpartum mental health issues. I wanted to cancel our embryo transfer because of all of these intrusive thoughts and fears. But on Monday, I did it afraid and we transferred our embryo. We’ll find out next week if I’m pregnant and I’m so glad I did it.” Oh my goodness, I cannot tell you how impressed I am. I wish nothing but joy for you. You did that hard thing, and I hope that however that turned out that