Coaching practices for Anxiety Avoidance List
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Anxiety Avoidance List, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My list of no-go situations keeps quietly getting longer as the fear spreads, and the whole thing feels too overwhelming to face head-on
- I’ve got all these little things I do to get through anxious moments
- My world has quietly shrunk to almost nothing
- On the outside I’m facing the thing, but inside I’m rehearsing every line, mapping the exits, silently bracing
- I’ve got all these little rules that keep me okay
Practices that may help
- Build an avoidance hierarchy and work through it systematically
List all the situations you avoid because of anxiety, from least to most frightening, then work up the list.
Safety Behavior Fading, Made Practical - Map your safety-behavior inventory
List every action you take to prevent feared outcomes in anxiety-provoking situations.
Safety Behavior Fading, Made Practical - Build an avoidance hierarchy
List the situations, places, people, and thoughts you avoid — ordered from least to most feared.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy: Principles, Practices, and the Evidence - Reduce covert mental safety behaviors
Identify and fade the mental acts — rehearsing, planning, distraction — that serve the same function as overt avoidance.
Safety Behavior Fading, Made Practical - Drop the safety behaviors
Let go of the small avoidances and crutches you use to feel "safe" from anxiety.
The DARE Response to Anxiety, Made Practical - Deliberately enter low-stakes discomfort
Regularly choose small situations that trigger the target anxiety so the nervous system learns it is survivable.
The Confidence–Competence Loop - Build an exposure hierarchy
List every feared situation and rank them by distress (0–100) before you do anything else.
The Fear Ladder: Graded Exposure Made Practical - Eliminate safety behaviors
Identify and drop the subtle actions that reduce anxiety but prevent learning you don’t need them.
Exposure Therapy: Facing Fears to Shrink Them - Gradually drop safety behaviors
Safety behaviors (a phone, a companion, a pill) reduce distress in the moment but prevent the learning that exposure is meant to produce.
The Fear Ladder: Graded Exposure Made Practical - Distinguish preventive avoidance from growth-limiting avoidance
Not all avoidance is the same: some situation selection is wise management; some is shrinking your life.
Situation Selection, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Avoidance Hierarchy Anxiety
List all the situations you avoid because of anxiety, from least to most frightening, then work up the list.
Build an avoidance hierarchy and work through it systematically
- Dropping Safety Behaviors Anxiety
Safety behaviors are actions people take to prevent feared outcomes during anxious situations — sitting to avoid fainting, avoiding eye contact to seem less socially threatening, checking repeatedly to prevent disaster. Paul Salkovskis identified them as a central maintenance mechanism: they prevent the person from learning that the feared outcome would not have happened anyway. Fading them — systematically reducing their use — is an evidence-supported component of CBT for anxiety disorders, with the strongest evidence in panic and social anxiety.
- Graduated Avoidance List
List all the situations you avoid because of anxiety, from least to most frightening, then work up the list.
- Panic Avoidance In Daily Life
Regularly choose small situations that trigger the target anxiety so the nervous system learns it is survivable.
Deliberately enter low-stakes discomfort
- Safety Behavior Fading For My Teenager
Safety behaviors are actions people take to prevent feared outcomes during anxious situations — sitting to avoid fainting, avoiding eye contact to seem less socially threatening, checking repeatedly to prevent disaster. Paul Salkovskis identified them as a central maintenance mechanism: they prevent the person from learning that the feared outcome would not have happened anyway. Fading them — systematically reducing their use — is an evidence-supported component of CBT for anxiety disorders, with the strongest evidence in panic and social anxiety.
- Safety Behavior Fading When Overwhelmed
Safety behaviors are actions people take to prevent feared outcomes during anxious situations — sitting to avoid fainting, avoiding eye contact to seem less socially threatening, checking repeatedly to prevent disaster. Paul Salkovskis identified them as a central maintenance mechanism: they prevent the person from learning that the feared outcome would not have happened anyway. Fading them — systematically reducing their use — is an evidence-supported component of CBT for anxiety disorders, with the strongest evidence in panic and social anxiety.
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