We all have patterns we can see clearly…and still can’t seem to stop. This week on the Being Well Podcast, Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how avoidance fuels these patterns, and how we can break the avoidance loop by updating our expectations and predictions about the future. They discuss what avoidance coping is, how the brain works as a prediction machine, why that means insight alone usually isn’t enough to break a pattern, and what the current science of exposure and expectancy violation says about how change actually happens.
This is the first of two episodes dedicated to this topic, the second will focus on how to brave our feared experiences and go from insight to action.
Key Topics
- 00:00: Intro: avoidance coping and mental predictions
- 8:07: Five types of avoidance behaviors
- 17:35: The invisible cage
- 23:50: Predictive processing
- 29:49: Identity and high confidence predictions
- 34:30: How avoidance can perpetuate painful experiences
- 40:01: Exposure and the Inhibitory Learning Model
- 52:00: Answering common questions
- 56:07: Recap
