The difference between avoidance and moving on can be hard to distinguish if you aren’t aware of the nuance between the two. Primarily, avoidance is done out of fear and awkwardness, while moving on is about respecting oneself and growth.
Why growth? Well, growth will take you in a different, unfamiliar direction. One facet of growth that many people gloss over is the change that comes with it. You often find that old relationships and situations just aren’t right for you anymore, and that’s okay.
But still, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between growth and avoidance, because one moves you forward, whereas the other just keeps you stuck by suppressing the bad stuff you don’t want to deal with. Let’s consider some common times when “moving on” is actually just running away, and what you can do about it.
1. When you don’t take the time to understand what went wrong with a situation.
As you experience things that don’t work out in life, you want to pause to re-examine the situation to see what lessons you can pull from it. That’s the key to growing and moving on. For example, let’s say you lose your job. Well, why did you lose it? Did you lose it because the company was having issues? Or was it more of a matter of your skills and not being able to meet the expectations of the role?
People who are just running from their problems are more likely to say, “Eh, screw that job,” and not think twice about it. Alternatively, they may blame their boss or coworkers instead of owning their actions that led to the job loss.
Speaking as someone who’s been fired from several jobs while I was unstable, I can attest to this personally. In my late teens and early 20s, I churned through so many jobs due to my undiagnosed mental illness, and I blamed everyone but myself. It was my manager for being unreasonable. It was my coworkers for not working hard enough. It was the job itself.
But, as I examine the situation now with more years behind me, I can identify that I was the problem in almost every situation. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, most of the time, because I just didn’t care. I was mentally unstable and couldn’t perform consistently. Once you stop avoiding the difficult truths, you can face them and genuinely grow.
2. When you replace your dreams, relationships, or goals immediately.
As therapist Michael Hilgers shares, many people practice avoidance through their busyness. That is, staying too busy to think about it. One relationship ends, they jump straight into the next one. One of their dreams expires, they move immediately on to the next one. A goal doesn’t work out? Well, they’re already moving on to whatever is next instead of taking a pause to sit with the change.
Again, it comes down to understanding oneself to properly emotionally process a loss. It hurts to miss a goal or for a dream to wither away. It’s painful to lose relationships, whether platonic or romantic. But everyone needs to learn how to sit with their pain, rather than obscuring it in more activities. Otherwise, you never fully heal from the loss. Instead, it catches up with you much later.
3. When you feel relief from avoiding the situation rather than the peace of resolution.
The peace of resolution is a much different feeling from the relief of avoidance. The relief of avoidance will have you thinking, “Wow. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with this!” because you’ve found a way to move on from it. But processing a difficult situation in order to fully move on is much harder because you have to take the time to actually feel the emotions that come with the change.
Of course, that will mean different things to different people. You may find yourself in a situation where moving on does still provide relief because the situation was long over. Thriveworks informs us that this is called “anticipatory grief,” and it is quite common in situations like these.
For example, consider leaving a bad relationship that hasn’t brought you any joy or peace of mind for the last two years. You may have already emotionally processed that the relationship was over a long time ago, so you do feel relief when you step away.
Still, in order to fully move on, there is valuable work to do in understanding why the relationship failed, so you don’t repeat those mistakes in the future.
4. When you avoid difficult conversations, particularly involving closure.
No one wants to have difficult, painful conversations, particularly when they signify an end. It’s hard to sit down and be present in pain, because most people don’t set out to fail. Even people who are having the worst breakups usually didn’t set out to have the relationship fail. They usually went into it hoping that it would add to their life, to their peace, and happiness.
But that isn’t the way it works out, is it? Even the best laid plans can go completely off the rails, and there’s nothing we can do other than accept it for what it is. After it does go off the rails, it’s helpful to be able to sit down with the other person and discuss where things went wrong, so you can learn from the experience.
In a perfect world, everyone would be able to do that, but we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world of messy people, bad decisions, and malicious intent. Sometimes, you can’t have a closure conversation because it would be too dangerous. That’s okay. Closure is a luxury, and unfortunately, not everyone gets it. But if you can, it helps with the healing process and growth.
5. When you find that the same problems seem to follow you wherever you go.
“Wherever you go, there you are” is an old saying that points to the truth of the matter of avoidance. What it means is that if you are having problems, and those problems follow you from environment to environment, it’s not the environment causing it. More than likely, it’s something in your own behavior or mindset that you haven’t identified and healed, yet. You’re not moving on by moving to a new environment; you’re just avoiding dealing with the root issue.
A common example is people with unhealed trauma who get into relationships to try to cope with their trauma. Sooner or later, the unhealthy behaviors from the trauma start trickling in, affecting the way that they interact with their loved ones. They may get bored or not be able to enjoy peace without any chaos, so they feel compelled to create chaos and self-sabotage because that’s what’s comfortable.
6. When your decisions are driven by fear and anxiety rather than your values.
Fear and anxiety fuel avoidance and cause us to run away from our problems and mistakes. In contrast, a person who is living with intention does not make the choice to move on out of fear. Instead, they do what they feel or know to be the right thing based on their values. And this often means reflecting on and taking responsibility for their own behavior and choices.
Sometimes, we make the wrong choices because we’re only human, and mistakes just happen at times. That’s ok. But when you make decisions driven by your values rather than fear, you at least don’t have to live in regret because you stood by what you believed, for better or worse.
Closing thoughts…
Running away is an unhealthy, maladaptive coping skill that many people use to avoid discomfort. Discomfort should not be avoided, whenever possible. Instead, it’s something to embrace. Embracing the discomfort makes it much easier to navigate and causes the other blows you will experience in life to land a bit softer.
The ability to have hard conversations and experience difficult emotions builds your emotional resilience. You’ll be okay. You just need to keep in mind that every end brings new beginnings.
