Coaching practices for Graduated Avoidance List
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Graduated 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
- My world has quietly shrunk to almost nothing
- There’s one big thing glaring at me from the top of my list that I just won’t touch
- Every time I try to face this head-on I aim for the scariest version of it, get overwhelmed, and retreat worse off than before
- There’s a thing I’ve told myself I’ll do "someday" for years now
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 - 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 - Place an important-seeming but deferrable task at the top of your list
Put a compelling but non-urgent task first, so everything below it gets done in avoidance of it.
Structured Procrastination, Made Practical - Build a personal discomfort gradient
Rank your avoidances from mildly uncomfortable to overwhelming, then start at the bottom.
Embracing Discomfort: Turning Resistance Into Growth - Distinguish genuine deferral from disguised refusal
An item that has been on the someday list for two or more years is not deferred — it has been declined without being acknowledged.
The Someday List - Track recurring domains where you consistently avoid the unfamiliar
Spot where unfamiliarity — not actual risk — is driving your avoidance, by logging avoidance decisions over time.
Ambiguity Aversion — Why Unknown Odds Feel Worse Than Bad Odds - 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 - 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 - Name the fear driving an avoidance goal
Surface the specific failure scenario an avoidance goal is bracing against.
Approach vs Avoidance Goals - 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
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
- Anxiety Avoidance List
List all the situations you avoid because of anxiety, from least to most frightening, then work up the list.
- Covert Avoidance Anxiety
Identify and fade the mental acts — rehearsing, planning, distraction — that serve the same function as overt avoidance.
Reduce covert mental safety behaviors
- Adaptive Avoidance
Not all avoidance is the same: some situation selection is wise management; some is shrinking your life.
Distinguish preventive avoidance from growth-limiting avoidance
- Avoidance And Confidence
Regularly choose small situations that trigger the target anxiety so the nervous system learns it is survivable.
Deliberately enter low-stakes discomfort
- Panic Avoidance In Daily Life
Regularly choose small situations that trigger the target anxiety so the nervous system learns it is survivable.
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