You know that email you haven’t replied to yet?
The dentist appointment you keep ‘meaning’ to book?
The important conversation you know you should have with your partner, boss, or mum… but somehow keep swerving?
That, dear reader, is avoidance, and before you feel called out, don’t worry, it is all of us.
Avoidance isn’t just a personality ‘thing’, it’s a strategy to avoid pain. Even, a coping mechanism or a psychological pattern that feels like protection, but usually leads to more inner tension, guilt, procrastination, and sometimes even illness. Yes, you read that right, even illness can be a form of avoidance.
Or in more traditional terms, avoidance is seen as not doing something that feels emotionally or psychologically uncomfortable.
Psychologists often describe it as a defence mechanism, something we do, often unconsciously, to protect ourselves from pain, fear, shame, or overwhelm. It is a way of managing anxiety… by not going near the thing that causes it.
We have learned somewhere in our early blueprint that ‘going there’, emotionally, relationally, physically, isn’t safe. So we find clever workarounds. We adapt, we look functional, and we build whole adult lives around carefully not feeling certain things.
But just because something is understandable does not mean it’s useful. In other words:
- It is valid to say ‘I learned to avoid because it kept me safe’.
- But it is also honest to say, ‘that strategy is now keeping me stuck’.
Avoidance isn’t just about skipping a session with your nutritional therapist because you have been bingeing on chocolate, or ghosting hard conversations (though yes, that too). It sneaks into daily life in surprisingly common ways. See if any of these sound familiar:
1. The productivity avoider
You have a list, you cross off five small tasks, but the one big, important, emotionally vulnerable thing? You don’t touch it, you say, ‘I’m just not in the right headspace for that yet’. REALLY?
2. The scroller
You feel agitated or anxious., so you grab your phone. Instagram, emails. refresh, scroll. You are ‘busy’ now…the emotion gets numbed, buried.
3. The polite peacekeeper
You smile, you say ‘it’s fine’, but you are not fine. You are furious, but conflict terrifies you. So you nod, swallow and resent later.
4. The chronic researcher
You read all the books, take the course, ask 10 friends, journal extensively, but never actually do the thing (launch, break up, apply, rest, move).
5. The body-based avoider
You are constantly tired, or bloated, or ‘too busy’ to show up. Your body becomes the place where avoidance gets somatised. (and this one is often subconscious.)
Did you know some of our students first apply because of the nutrition medicine. But what they often discover is that if they’d stopped there, they would have been short-changing themselves. The coaching element isn’t just an add-on, it is where the transformation begins. Here’s how Yoana (Cohort 2022–2024) puts it…
And yes, it was the Nutritional therapy that I signed up for. I accepted that the ‘coaching part’ came with it. Oh how coaching cracked us open and put us back together – softly, layer by layer. And it also taught us how to hold space for ourselves, for each other, for clients, for our loved ones and close ones. Among other things.
A science background is not a requirement and lack of one will not hold you back. Bring your curiosity and passion for learning, and be open to what comes. But also, be prepared to work hard and invest time and effort in order to get the most out of the two years. It is totally worth it.
Avoidance in a nutrition therapy practice
Our students learn that avoidance is not resistance, but rather a clue, an aspect of protective intelligence that once served them and/or their client, and may still be serving them.
Their ‘job’ as a practitioner in nutrition and psychological coaching is not to bulldoze, but to get curious about avoidance, with themselves or their client. To gently build the safety that allows their system to choose connection over avoidance and in their own time.
Common forms of avoidance that are seen in practice as nutritional therapists and psychological coaches:
1. The ‘over-tester and under-feeler’
A client books every test: HTMA, DUTCH, GI-MAP, OAT, bloods, even books the retests. They take supplements like a full-time job. Have done the Covid jab detox! But when gently asked about how they feel, how they sleep, whether they slow down…they change the subject. Ask about zinc again. They are not flaky, they are afraid that if they slow down, the emotion will catch up. And this fear is valid.
Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: meet them with nervous system pacing, not pressure.
2. The devoted mother who is hiding
She brings her child to every session. Tracks their stool, their sleep, their mineral ratios. However, she is piling on the weight, looks pale, her hair is thinning. She has not eaten a full meal sitting down in weeks. You ask about her energy, she smiles and says,
‘I am fine, I am just here for them.’ She is NOT dismissing herself out of ego, she is avoiding her own pain through devotion. It is safer to fix her child than to feel what she has been pushing down for years.
- Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: not to push but to gently offer her back to herself.
3. The self-aware client who knows all the language
They say ‘I am in functional freeze’ or ‘my vagal tone is weak’, and they are not wrong, but they never let you in. They talk about emotions, but not from them. They have built a brilliant, intellectual fortress around their pain, and you can feel it in your body as a practitioner: you are being kept out. This is NOT arrogance, this is ‘protection’.
- Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: no more information, provide relational safety and co-regulation. A place where they don’t have to be the smart one.
4. The woman who ‘just wants to lose weight’
She says it is about her metabolismMetabolism is not a calorie-burning furnace that sits somewhere near your belly button, deciding whether you can fit into last year's jeans. Metabolism is the set of chemical processes taking place inside your body every second of every day, keeping you alive., her thyroid hormones. She tracks every macro, she does all the ‘right’ things. However, when you ask how she feels when she looks in the mirror, or who first told her she was not enough, she laughs, deflects. changes the topic. Because this isn’t about food, it is not about nutrition, this is about grief, shame, unspoken stories held in the body. And she is not ready to go there yet.
- Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: meet her,where she is, not where you want her to be.
5. The client who can’t feel angerThey are exhausted, resentful, wired, but tired. Their cortisol is ‘flatlined’, their digestion is slow, and their voice trembles when they speak. You know there’s unexpressed rage in the system, years of saying ‘yes’ when they meant no. But they say, ‘I don’t get angry, I am not an angry person’. But somewhere along the way, anger became unsafe or unacceptable.
- Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: not to force catharsis, but slowly build safety in the body, so when anger does surface, it does NOT feel like annihilation or a betrayal.
6. The spiritually-aware client who is ‘letting the universe decide’
They have done the breathwork. The cacao and ayahuasca ceremonies. They talk about alignment, embodiment, and energy medicine with fluency. And yet, they are not moving forward. Their gut is not only bloated all the time but constipated, their relationships are still hurting. When you suggest potential root causes or a step forward, they may say: I am just waiting for the right energy, I am trying not to force anything and Mercury is still in retrograde’. They are not being difficult or flaky. They are using spiritual language to protect themselves from emotional contact, be it grief, fear, or uncertainty that feels too overwhelming to face directly. It is easier to say ‘It is not aligned’ than to say ‘I am scared’.
- Role of integrative nutritional therapist and psychological coach: not to confront, but to gently name the pattern with respect, and start building the trust it would take for them to meet what’s underneath the ‘mantra’.
Sometimes, the most spiritual thing to do, is make the call, say the honest thing, feel the damn feeling. It can be liberating.
Learn more about our curriculum….
Why do we avoid?
Avoidance works, temporarily.. It soothes the nervous system. It gives us a hit of relief. And sometimes, especially in childhood or trauma contexts, it was the smartest thing we could have done. But in adult life, what was once survival can become a kind of self-sabotage.
Avoidance often protects us from:
- Fear of failure: ‘if I don’t try, I can’t fail.’
- Fear of success: ‘if this works, what might change? Will I still be liked?’
- Fear of shame: ‘what if they see I am not as capable/smart/good as I seem?’
- Fear of conflict: ‘if I speak up, I will rock the boat or be rejected’.
- Fear of grief: ‘if I slow down, I might feel everything I have been avoiding’.
We avoid things not because we are lazy or weak, but because something in us is ‘frightened’. Avoidance is not a character flaw; it is often a quiet trauma pattern.
What can you do instead?
Avoidance doesn’t need to be ‘fixed’, it needs to be understood. This is where good coaching, and even journaling can help.
Try asking:
- What am I really avoiding?
- What’s the emotion under the task?
- What would a tiny, safe next step look like?
Try gentle exposure:
Not forced, neither rushed, just gentle forward movement.
- Open the email (even if you don’t reply yet).
- Write the first sentence (even if you don’t send it).
- Say the scary truth… to yourself first.
Practice nervous system safety:
Regulate before you act, move your body, breathe. Co-regulate. Often, what you avoid feels big because your system feels small. Build capacity first.
Notice your patterns without shame:
Avoidance is just a signal. When you meet it with curiosity instead of criticism, it becomes a portal to healing, not a sign of failure.
From avoidance to agency
We all have our ‘avoidance edge’, that one area where we always ‘flinch’. The goal isn’t to become a fearless, emotionally bulletproof doer. PHEW! It is to build the capacity to be with discomfort…without it ‘running the show’. On the other side of avoidance is usually something really important: growth. clarity. connection, self-respect.
So if you’re reading this and thinking,’Damn! That is me’, this is good as it means the awareness is there. The door is cracked open and now, maybe, gently, you walk through it.
‘True maturity comes not from transcending our messiness, but by turning toward it, kindly and courageously’ (author unknown)
Want to train at the New School of Nutritional Medicine and become a nutritional therapist and a psychological coach? Learn and apply all the above and more, in your life and the lives of others? Request our Open Day Replay recording and/or apply below.
From the team at the New School of Nutritional Medicine
Learn about the Founder & Principal of the New School of Nutritional Medicine, Dr Khush Mark PhD HERE.
