Within the behavioural science world there’s a new collective of behaviours which are getting connected together. There’s been observed a rising trend that people who are suffering from low resilience, mental and physical illness and social isolation participate in “Experiential Avoidance”.

This is being described as not just a generalised anxiety, but instead a process where people use their fears and worries to avoid any changes, maintaining an inertia and pattern of behaviour to avoid experiences.

However experiences and challenge are what shape and define us, increasing our resilience and therefore our mental and physical health. Not just that, but experiences enrich our lives, making it worth living!

Both physical and mental illness continue to rise, regardless of our better knowledge. Every generation since the 1950s has suffered worse and worse declines, and the modern generations are expected to be some of the first which may have worse health, and shorter lives than their parents.

Our mental and physical health is closely linked to our resilience and our choices. The more we know and more tolerant we are of discomfort and anxieties the more healthy choices we can make. Experiential avoidance is more than just anxiety over making those choices, it’s proactively avoidant.

When a person is participating in Experiential Avoidance, they look to try and keep themselves within a pattern of behaviours to prevent fear and anxiety. To keep it simple, they avoid experiences, because these are challenging!

With families, Experiential Avoidance is likely to emerge at home when trying new things. Particularly extra-curricular activities or new hobbies, where there’s a whole host of new experiences from new people to new rules and new skills. This often leads to either refusal to try, anxiety at the door, or early-quitting behaviour where young people turn to avoidance behaviours within the first stages of learning.

Experiential Avoidance is still a new concept, and there’s a lot of investigation going on. However it’s clear that there’s a link between Experiential Avoidance, and the resilience of taking risks. Taking risks happens in our everyday lives as we challenge ourselves and our way of thinking.

There’s a growing resistance to risk taking with young people, and with our consistent efforts to reduce risk in the name of reducing harm, we’ve become hyper-sensitive to the discomfort of young people. By raising generations of young people with an aversion to risk, we’ve prevented them from having healthy interactions with experiences which are challenging, meaning their resilience to those situations are low or non-existent.

As a result, when they experience trepidation, anxiety, fear or stress at everyday levels, such as having a new experience, they flinch away. Instead they opt to do the things which are comfortable, even if that comfort leaves them feeling isolated or anxious. It’s the devil they know.

This is combined with the compounding effect of technology overuse in homes, and the diminishing physical activity young people are exposed to. They have comfortable, predictable online worlds which reinforce their behaviours and provide an alternative to real challenges.

Experiential Avoidance is one of the behavioural “Doom Loops” of resilience. This means that it’s a self-perpetuating cycle of behaviour which reinforces itself the more it continues. Even if we’re already anxious, lonely or unwell, when we encounter a challenge or a new experience, it triggers avoidance behaviour in us.

When we let this avoidance behaviour play out, especially in young people, it reinforces itself. We reduce those challenging feelings of fear, anxiety, doubt or nerves and in some cases even replace them with “safe” feelings, even if those feelings are just patterns of loneliness or sadness.

This means that not only do we end up with patterns of thinking and behaving which become more and more entrenched, but we also neurologically cement them. There’s growing evidence that dementia disorders can be linked to recurring negative patterns of thinking. By failing to challenge ourselves we only use loops of thinking, small parts of our brain. The rest begins to erode away.

We’re not kidding, taking risks is the key! Risk taking has all of the outcomes we need to not only combat Experiential Avoidance, but to replace it with real and deep resilience. Risk taking helps us to see things from different angles, to challenge our bodies and our ways of thinking and places us in positions where we need to think and feel differently to overcome those challenges.

At Risky Kids we deploy a whole range of tools to challenge young people, starting with their thinking. We use a tool we call “Mindsets” which you can use at home! Collect together important ways of thinking, acting and values as a family, and give it a catchy name. For example:

• Rub It And Run: This Risky Kids Mindset discusses how to tell the difference between when we’re really hurt, or where we’ve just experienced a manageable bit of pain that we can work through. It also explores how if we let every bump and scrape stop us, we’ll miss out on so many big adventures!
• Practice Makes Possible: There is no perfect, even when you’re a master. Practice isn’t just the way that we learn new things, it’s how we hold onto our skills. If we don’t practise our skills (Moves OR Mindsets) then they’ll start to fade, no matter how good we got!
• Act Don’t Act Out: We discuss with young people how negative feelings can be powerful, like frustration and anger. We discuss how when we have those emotions that we can channel it into something productive, or we can let it make a situation worse. We teach young people how to harness and understand those feelings.

Combine home Mindsets like this with risk taking, outdoor and challenging experiences as a family. The adventures you have become the places to discuss and deploy these Mindsets and strengthen them.

As generations of young people grow up with this pattern, they’re going to raise kids of their own and see this as the new normal. We must intervene and turn toward healthy, facilitated risk taking. Challenge young people and don’t give in to comfort because it’s easy!The long term impacts are less healthy young people and adults who need more and more support. Firstly that makes parenting that much harder, but it also means people who will struggle to contribute to a better world for themselves and for others.