Name It

Written By: OB

Avoidance is one of my most deeply entrenched habits. In second grade, I can remember stuffing all of my homework behind the curtain in my bedroom every day after school, slipping each page into my secret folder like bills into a vending machine. 

The feeling was the same. Immediate, delicious reward. Unless the bill pops back out.

That is the thing about avoidance, isn’t it? You can only avoid things that don’t go away. That don’t pop back out. And usually, things get worse the longer you avoid them. Like homework. Or taxes. Or cleaning the kitty litter. Or replying to that email. Or reaching an important goal. 

Or washing your face. 

Avoidance feels like how cringe complications look. Your body tenses up over and over as you squint and cock your head away, blinking one eye open as your retinas glue to the screen –– stickier, stickier, stickier with every passing moment. You may turn your head away, but the disaster unfolding in front of you never exits your line of sight.

I’ve done my fair share of internet digging into why so many of us deal with avoidant behaviors. Blah blah blah anxiety, blah blah blah falsely protecting us, blah blah blah the only antidote is action. 

Another deeply entrenched flaw of mine is the gulf between what I know intellectually and what I’ve internalized emotionally. I know that setting up habit systems is better than relying on spontaneous motivation. I know that habit change requires consistency. I know that just starting a task will likely lead to you finishing it. I know these things, but rarely does this intellectual knowledge actually prevent me from cooking up a delicious avoidance stew more than several times a week, garnished with guilt and a little splash of shame. Okay, a big splash of shame.

Anyway, back to the face and washing it. I know my skin is important to me. I know I finally have a simple, effective routine that works for me after years of horrific acne. And yet, when bedtime rolls around (you know, sometimes 10 pm, sometimes 4 am) I just — I can’t do it. It’s pathetic, but it’s true, like, 50% of the time.

But instead of accepting that I am just going to bed with my Kiehl's mineral sunscreen and Glossier blush on from that 10 AM zoom meeting, I spend another 2-4 hours awake, wondering if some magical external force will shift my inertial state from a body at rest to a body in motion. 

Spoiler! No such force magically arrives.

Unless…? 

Unless, that is, I could produce the bare minimum amount of motion to shift that inertial state. No, not just splashing water on my face. Not just walking to the bathroom. Even putting my feet on the floor is too much. More often than not, these “hacks” I’ve picked up fail me, because my body knows I’m tricking her (observant bitch).

The energy I need to rouse is deep within. It’s shoving my hand into my gut and ripping out that little ball of shame that lives behind the curtain. It’s exposing it to sunlight, where it immediately shrivels and dies. Where the absurdity of my self judgement can’t hold up to the mirror of reality, where empathy and love live.

I need to name it. The feeling. Out loud. To someone who can hear. It sounds deceptively easy until you actually try it.

This is the only effective strategy I’ve found so far to close that gap between what I know intellectually (you’re feeling avoidant of this task) and what I’ve internalized emotionally (there is no way that I’m going to do this thing I’m going to do; I’m just going to stew in shame until some other big emotion knocks it out of place).

So I text a trusted friend.

“I don’t want to wash my face.” 

“Wash your face.”

“It’s just not going to happen.” 

“I believe in you. Go wash your face.”

“Fine.”

You don’t need to be happy about it. You don’t need to transform into a “Get Ready For Bed With Me!” YouTube video. You can be grumpy the whole way through. That’s the thing about doing the things we need to do for ourselves. Whether we do it joyfully or grumpily, getting it done is more important than being happy about it. Self love isn’t always sexy.

So what are you avoiding right now? Instead of feeling the shame you likely are feeling, try naming it out loud. You can start with quietly to yourself. The most important thing is that you are honest. Really honest.

I’ll give you a minute to really do it.

How do you feel now?

... Now text it to a friend you really trust. 

To letting our most absurd sources of shame shrivel and die in the sun.