When Tools Become Hiding Places

I don’t think avoidance always looks like avoidance. Sometimes it looks extremely responsible.

I’ve processed it. I’ve journaled about it. I’ve talked to my therapist. I’ve meditated. I’ve pulled cards. I’ve looked at the astrology. I’ve thought about my childhood. I’ve identified the pattern.

Excellent.

Have I actually done anything?

Well. That’s a separate question.

I have absolutely journaled about a conversation instead of having it. I’ve looked for clarity in tarot when I already knew what I wanted but didn’t like what wanting it might require. I’ve thrown myself into work because productivity is much easier for me than loneliness. I’ve tried to understand a feeling when what I really needed was to cry. I’ve wanted to find meaning in an ending before I had allowed myself to admit that I was devastated by it.

Maybe you have your own version of this.

Maybe you research the problem long after you have enough information. Maybe you keep talking about something because talking about it feels close enough to doing something about it. Maybe you take care of everyone else, clean the house, go to the gym, make another list, book another session, read another book, or find another explanation.

None of those things are inherently avoidance.

That’s what makes this complicated.

I’ve also done Reiki when Reiki was exactly what I needed. I’ve meditated and felt something loosen that I couldn’t think my way through. I’ve written pages in a journal and finally found words for something I hadn’t been able to say.

The practice isn’t the problem.

The question is what I’m asking it to do for me.

Processing can become its own form of avoidance

This was a particularly inconvenient realization for someone who loves understanding things.

I can analyze almost anything. Give me a feeling and enough time, and I can probably tell you where it came from, what triggered it, what childhood experience it resembles, which relationship pattern is involved, and possibly what Saturn has to say about the entire situation.

None of that means I have actually experienced the feeling.

There’s a difference between understanding something and being with it.

I can understand grief without grieving. I can know exactly why I’m angry without allowing myself to be angry. I can explain why I need a boundary without setting one. I can trace my difficulty asking for help all the way back to childhood and still not ask anyone for help.

You can understand your patterns beautifully and still keep repeating them.

You can know exactly why something hurt and still avoid admitting how much it hurt. You can understand where your fear comes from without doing the thing that scares you. You can know why you need to say no, why saying no is difficult for you, and what happens when you don’t say no, and still say yes.

Insight matters. I wouldn’t spend so much time trying to understand myself if I didn’t believe that.

But there comes a point when understanding stops being the next step.

At some point, we have enough information.

Then we have to do something with it.

Or sometimes, very deliberately, do nothing.

That last one might actually be harder for me. I am very good at turning feelings into projects. Give them a framework. Find the origin. Identify the pattern. Make a plan. Do the practice.

Maybe you do this too.

Sometimes it’s easier to work on a feeling than to have one.

The detours can look surprisingly healthy

Some of mine have become embarrassingly predictable.

Journaling is a big one. There are times when writing helps me figure out what I think before I try to communicate it. It gives me somewhere to put the mess before I ask another person to understand it.

And then there are times when I have written an extremely compelling argument that the other person has never heard.

At some point, the journal has done all it can do.

I have to have the conversation.

Tarot can work the same way. I love tarot because it gives me another way to look at something. It can surface a question I haven’t asked or make me notice something I already know but haven’t quite acknowledged.

But if I keep pulling cards about the same question, I usually don’t need another card.

I don’t like my options.

Different problem.

Meditation can become a detour too, especially with anger. I’ve spent years learning how to regulate myself, observe my reactions, create space before responding, and not let every emotion dictate what happens next. Those are useful skills.

But sometimes I don’t need to calm down immediately.

Sometimes I’m angry because something happened that I should be angry about.

If my first response is always to regulate the anger away, I can skip right past the information inside it. I can make myself calm before I’ve acknowledged that something hurt, crossed a line, or needs to change.

Maybe your version isn’t meditation. Maybe it’s immediately trying to see the other person’s perspective. Maybe it’s telling yourself they didn’t mean it that way. Maybe it’s explaining away your reaction before you’ve even figured out what the reaction is trying to tell you.

Being able to regulate yourself is useful.

Making every uncomfortable feeling disappear as quickly as possible is something else.

Then there’s work.

Work is particularly sneaky for me because everyone congratulates you for this one.

Nobody looks at a very productive week and says, “Are you perhaps accomplishing things at an alarming rate because you’re sad?”

Maybe they should.

I know how to work. I know how to solve problems. I know how to make a plan and move something forward. There is a satisfying relationship between effort and outcome that feelings absolutely refuse to provide.

Loneliness doesn’t care how competent I am.

Grief has terrible project management.

So sometimes work becomes the place I go because there, at least, I know what to do.

Maybe your version isn’t work. Maybe it’s cleaning the house, making plans, taking care of everyone else, exercising, scrolling, researching the problem, or filling every empty hour.

The activity itself may be completely healthy.

The more interesting question might be what happens when you stop.

And then there’s my personal favorite: meaning.

What did this teach me? Why did this happen? What am I supposed to take from it? What pattern am I being shown?

These can be excellent questions.

Sometimes later.

Sometimes the first truth is much less interesting.

This hurt.

I miss them.

I’m disappointed.

I wanted it to be different.

Sometimes there isn’t a lesson yet because we’re still in the part where something hurts.

I have a tendency to want meaning quickly. Meaning gives the experience somewhere to go. It turns something painful into something useful.

But not everything has to become useful immediately.

Sometimes grief gets to be grief before it becomes wisdom.

What am I hoping this will do for me?

I don’t want to become suspicious of every practice that helps me. That would just turn self-awareness into another exhausting form of self-monitoring.

So I’ve started asking myself a simpler question before I automatically reach for one of my tools:

What am I hoping this will do for me?

If I want to meditate because I need some quiet, I meditate.

If I want to pull a card because I’m curious about what it might bring up, I pull one.

If I want Reiki because I know I usually feel better afterward, wonderful.

But if the honest answer is, I want this to make the feeling go away, I pay attention.

Maybe I still use the tool.

But maybe the feeling doesn’t need to go away yet.

Maybe it needs ten minutes without being interpreted.

You can ask the same question about whatever you reach for.

What are you hoping this conversation, practice, book, workout, therapy session, glass of wine, workday, journal entry, or Google search will do?

Are you looking for something you genuinely need?

Or are you hoping it will change the fact that you already know what you need to do?

There isn’t always going to be a clean answer. Sometimes something can be both helpful and avoidant at the same time. Sometimes I don’t realize what I was doing until much later.

That’s okay.

The point isn’t to catch ourselves doing avoidance correctly.

It’s to notice.

Sometimes the tool is exactly what you need

I don’t believe suffering becomes more legitimate because you experience it without support.

Use the tools that help you.

Go to therapy. Journal. Meditate. Book the Reiki session. Call your friend. Pull the card. Take the bath. Light the candle.

There is no prize for raw dogging every difficult emotion.

I’m certainly not going to stop journaling, meditating, pulling cards, getting Reiki, looking at astrology, or throwing myself into work I care about. These things are part of how I understand myself and move through my life.

I just want to get better at noticing what I’m asking them to do for me.

Am I trying to understand what I’m feeling, or avoid feeling it?

Am I looking for information I genuinely don’t have, or hoping something outside of me will make a decision I already know I need to make?

Am I taking care of myself, or making myself more comfortable so I don’t have to address what made me uncomfortable in the first place?

Sometimes the answer will still be: light the candle. Pull the card. Open the journal. Go to therapy. Meditate. Take the bath.

And sometimes it will be: make the phone call.

Say the thing.

Let yourself be angry.

Admit that you’re lonely.

Cry without trying to figure out what the crying means.

Maybe you already know what your version of this is. The thing you reach for when something feels uncomfortable. The practice that genuinely helps you most of the time but occasionally becomes a very sophisticated way of not dealing with what is right in front of you.

You don’t have to stop doing it.

I don’t think the goal is to strip ourselves of all the ways we’ve learned to care for ourselves just to prove we can tolerate discomfort.

I think it’s much simpler than that.

I want my practices to help me meet what’s here.

I just don’t want them to become the place I hide from it.