Avoiding Avoiding

• Giving difficult feedback to a friend

• Delivering a "No" to someone vulnerable or obnoxious,

• Making an apology owed and long overdue.

  
  

These never get easier with time.

And they become steadily more expensive in terms of your own confidence or comfort.

So here’s some balancing reassurance: Avoidance is a normal human response.

Avoidance is a common and effective short-term coping strategy. It is completely normal—and in some ways admirable—to not want to disappoint, anger, or hurt another human. But protecting the relationship may also keep it from becoming deeper or stronger. And lugging the weight of what does not get said—generates physical and emotional stress on the body.

Protecting the relationship with another by not speaking is also protecting yourself. But it can also have the effect of betraying your own values or burying feelings that are worth recognizing. if the relationship—or, most importantly, you--are to grow and thrive.

There is a way to resolve it: It is hard to do but easy to remember: Avoid Avoidance. I’ve generally been bad at this, especially with housekeeping chores.

But Avoiding Avoidance does get easier with old age. (What!?!) Yes. Unlike putting on your shoes, using a remote, or plucking chin hairs, Avoiding Avoidance becomes simpler –or at least more possible—because 1) we know our own habits, 2) have learned (at least some things) from experience and observation, and 3) know time is limited. And we also might have become more mellow with time, like a good Scotch. We’ve learned that if we wait too long the opportunity to offer feedback or apologize will disappear—so now you’re stuck with the guilt or regret. And the courage to sky dive will be irrelevant because there is an upper age limit.

Today was Maddy's turn to write the blog. I am working hard to get Linda ready to do two talks later in the week. One is about Friendship and the other is about Creativity in Later Life - both are themes in Not The Trip We Planned, available where books of good taste are sold, and it can also be purchased on Amazon. You will need a half dozen for Mother's Day gifts.