Author: Courtney Flood, co-founder and CEO at Trinity Wellness Group
Emotions can be difficult for anyone to communicate. But there’s a difference between struggling to express your emotions from time to time and being emotionally avoidant. Emotional avoidance is when someone tries to actively ignore or push away emotions: it’s typically a learned behavior to make emotions feel less intense.
There are no clear statistics around emotional avoidance, but avoidant attachment styles — which reflect emotional avoidance in how people form relationships with others — are found in roughly 1 to 4 people [1].
Emotional health is just as important as physical health. Humans aren’t designed to contain feelings or deny natural responses to adverse events. Emotional avoidance takes a toll in many ways, notably on mental health, where it can lead to depression and other detrimental conditions.
In this article, I explain what emotional avoidance looks like, why it develops, and the repercussions it has on mental health.
What Is Emotional Avoidance?
There are certain emotions that are uncomfortable for us to sit with, such as grief, shame, embarrassment, and sadness. It’s normal to occasionally take action to bypass feeling these emotions. Perhaps you walk a different way home to avoid your ex’s house, you unfollow a previous colleague on social media, or you skip a song that reminds you of a relative who died.
The problem, though, is when these behaviors become coping mechanisms, and you start to view the emotion you’re sidestepping as dangerous. By this point, you have developed emotional avoidance, where you do everything possible to not encounter the emotion.
There are three types of emotional avoidance.
The Mental Cost of Emotional Avoidance
Our inner emotional landscape is a significant part of who we are. Our emotions (both those perceived as “good” and “bad”) are necessary to us. Denying parts of them has a very real impact on how we function.
We can never truly avoid emotions; instead, the discomfort we try so hard to ignore gets redirected to other areas of the mind and body.
Emotional avoidance has been associated with higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. It’s also been linked to conduct disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [2]. One study found that emotional avoidance among people who had experienced a traumatic event predicted more severe depression symptoms one year after the event [3]. Another study showed that emotional avoidance is positively associated with more severe PTSD symptoms [4].
Emotional avoidance can make someone more vulnerable to substance use disorders (SUD), and more likely to continue a substance use disorder. It not only fuels addictive behavior but also contributes to poorer treatment engagement and outcomes for addiction [5].
Trying not to feel difficult emotions ironically intensifies and extends them. Emotions don’t simply go away. If they are not processed, they move and manifest elsewhere. Beyond the possible clinical diagnoses that can occur due to emotional avoidance, it can prevent people from self-reflection and self-care that helps build psychological resilience.
What Causes Emotional Avoidance?
There are several factors that can fuel emotional avoidance. Trauma is a notable one. People who have undergone abuse, loss, or who have lived through or witnessed a traumatic event may avoid emotions in an attempt to not revisit pain. Emotional avoidance in this instance can actually impede recovery from trauma [6].
Another cause is learned behaviors, where a person grew up in an environment where difficult emotions weren’t expressed. This type of setting teaches someone that certain emotions are dangerous or aren’t valid. They internalize that sentiment and mirror the avoidance behaviors they saw.
Genetics may play a role, too. Research suggests that a mutation in a specific gene in the brain, which regulates dopamine and stress hormones, may be present in up to 39% of adults with avoidant tendencies [7].
Social constructs interact with emotional avoidance. For example, people may avoid emotions out of fear of being vulnerable, which for groups such as men and business executives is often viewed as being weak. Other individuals may lack the tools or vocabulary to identify and articulate emotions, making difficult emotions seem particularly overwhelming and necessary to dismiss.
Healing Emotional Avoidance and Its Effects
It’s possible to heal emotional avoidance and to learn to process difficult emotions safely. Part of the journey is recognizing when emotions come up, naming them, and gradually being able to stay with the emotion. It also involves challenging beliefs about emotions being scary, unnecessary, or weak.
Much of the process combines self-awareness and building distress tolerance, helping a person understand their aversion to emotions and to trust that they are secure and strong enough to deal with them.
Structured treatment such as the mental health day treatment program at Trinity Wellness Group, is effective for overcoming emotional avoidance. If a person is experiencing or is vulnerable to an SUD, this type of care is essential. It integrates evidence-based therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to create psychological flexibility and holistic activities to facilitate somatic processing.
Emotional avoidance, much like emotions, is complex. However, it does not have to be permanent. Confronting avoidance can lower the risk of developing mental health disorders, substance disorders, and damaging relationships that support emotional regulation and intelligence.
Being able to face difficult emotions is a skill — one that everyone is capable of. It brings better health, deeper connections, and a more meaningful life.
About the Author
Courtney Flood is the co-founder and CEO at Trinity Wellness Group, a mental health and addiction treatment center in Massachusetts. She is deeply committed to helping individuals heal and ensuring that financial considerations never compromise the quality of healthcare treatment. She is known for hands-on leadership, a focus on integrity, and true dedication.
Sources
[1] WebMD. (2025). What Is Avoidant Attachment?. webmd.com.
[2] Wang, Y. et al. (2024). Experiential Avoidance Process Model: A Review of the Mechanism for the Generation and Maintenance of Avoidance Behavior. Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology.
[3] Forbes, C. et al. (2020). Emotional Avoidance and Social Support Interact to Predict Depression Symptom Severity One Year After Traumatic Exposure. Psychiatry Research.
[4] Tull, M. et al. (2011). Examining the role of emotional avoidance in the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity and worry. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
[5] Sequeda, G. et al. (2026). Experiential Avoidance and Psychoactive Substance Use: Systematic Review. European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education.
[6] Pineles, S. et al. (2012). Trauma Reactivity, Avoidant Coping, and PTSD Symptoms: A Moderating Relationship?. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
[7] Erkoreka, L. et al. (2021). Genetics of adult attachment: An updated review of the literature. World Journal of Psychiatry.