Avoidance: As a coping tool

Everyone uses avoidance at times. You avoid that annoying co-worker, put off the laundry for another day, and you watch a movie to distract you from thinking about something unpleasant.

Avoidance is a great short term solution, but it cannot help you process your trauma. The longer you avoid your pain and hurt, the more likely you are to increase anxiety and you are much more likely to develop serious new issues like substance abuse.

It is really difficult for a grown adult to deal with new trauma in their lives. Now imagine a child who has gone from home to home and accumulated multiple lifetimes of trauma. They only know trauma. They have issues with trust. They fear losing everything all the time. All their experiences tell them that people are going to hurt them again. They feel worthless.

Now imagine knowing that your child needs to process that trauma in order to move on, to heal, to be able to whole. Your kid constantly expects you to let them down no matter how many times you show up. You have to challenge all their preconceptions all the time because the moment you let them down, you prove to them that they have no value. That this is just the way life is – a constant disappointment.

Your kids will avoid telling you things like they are having a field trip at school, they are supposed to bring stuff for the canned food drive, they need new shoes because theirs have holes, they are skipping meals at school. They will avoid their chores, their dance practice, their friend’s birthday. They will avoid it all because they do not want to be let down.

You will be told to set boundaries and stick to them. You will be told that you are spoiling your children. You will get a lot of parenting advice that does not fit with the kids you are trying to raise. Your kids come to you expecting you to fail them. Your kids expect to fail themselves. They do not do their homework or show up to school functions because they think they will hear that they are a waste of space, time or resources.

When you bring a child that has experienced more loss and hurt in their lives than anyone can imagine. You are going to have to avoid hurting them as much as possible.

Every time you succeed in showing them that you love them, they are going to avoid you. Experiencing love and belonging is a new and scary feeling. Hurt children want to avoid feelings even the good ones because they are new. These feelings also hurt because it shows them what their life should have been like before you.

Even when you do everything right. You will still hurt them. It is painful to be confronted with how things should be. When you have gone your whole life with food insecurity, you are still skeptical of it and want to hoard some food for later. The same with love, care and safety. It is new and scary to feel these new things and you are going to avoid that happening again. You are going to avoid situations where you might not receive love, care and safety again. You know what it feels like to not have those things, so if you can continue living and expecting nothing, then it will not hurt when you do not get it, right?

For people who have been through trauma, avoidance is not a short term solution. It is a long term plan to keep yourself safe because the world is not safe.