Avoidance Reversal
Whatever emotion you avoid, you invite — in exactly the way you avoid it. Backward-engineer any problem.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 94%
Hudson's most counterintuitive mechanic: the strategy you use to avoid a feeling is precisely the mechanism that manufactures that feeling in your life. A conflict-avoidant CEO avoids the out-of-control feeling of conflict, and by avoiding it produces a tense organisation they cannot control. Because the loop is deterministic, you can reverse-engineer any recurring problem back to the single feeling you refuse to have — and then solve it by being willing to feel that feeling.
Origin
Joe Hudson, from his executive coaching work at Art of Accomplishment; he illustrates it with his own childhood pattern around an alcoholic father and emotional abandonment.
Core principles
- 01Every way we go to avoid a feeling becomes the way that feeling gets invited toward us.
- 02The avoidance behaviour is always upstream of the problem, and is usually invisible to the person running it.
- 03The solution is never a better avoidance strategy — it is willingness to feel the feeling.
- 04What we resist persists. Accepting the reality on the ground is what changes the reality on the ground.
- 05The response you give matters far less than the emotional place the response comes from.
How to run it
- 1
Name one recurring problem
Pick a loop you keep landing in: constant arguments with a partner, a tense team, decisions that never get made.
- 2
Ask what feeling you do not want to have in that situation
In an argument: shame. In conflict: out-of-controlness. In feedback: failure. Be specific and name the emotion, not the situation.
Pro tip The emotion is usually one you have a lifelong history of avoiding, not a one-off.
- 3
Identify the move you make to avoid feeling it
Trace the first action. 'I don't want to feel ashamed, so I defend myself.' 'I don't want to feel out of control, so I dodge the conflict.'
- 4
Show that the avoidance move is what creates the problem
Complete the loop: defending myself starts the fight, and the fight makes me feel more ashamed. Avoiding conflict creates a tense org, which makes me feel more out of control.
Pro tip Write the loop as a single sentence with arrows. If it doesn't close back on the same feeling, you have named the wrong feeling.
- 5
Break the loop by feeling the feeling instead of making the move
Next time, do not defend. Feel the shame. Then respond from that place — 'I hear that you want me to take out the trash, and that's not my truth' — instead of from the defence.
Pro tip The wording matters less than the origin. A soft sentence from a defended place still starts the fight.
Watch out This is simple to state and hard to execute in the moment. Expect to catch it retrospectively for a while before you catch it live.
In the wild
A CEO won't feel the out-of-controlness that argument produces, so they avoid conflict. Decisions stop being made. Tension never gets relieved. People get progressively more upset.
→ The CEO ends up running a tense organisation they feel completely out of control of — the exact experience they were avoiding.
'You didn't take out the trash.' The feeling you don't want is shame, so you defend yourself, which starts the fight, which produces more shame. Reversed: feel the shame, then either apologise or say honestly 'I don't want to take out the trash.'
→ The fight never starts, because the defence — not the disagreement — was the ignition.
A CMO says they can't speak their truth to a shouty CEO. Hudson asks: is there one person who can? The answer is always yes. That person doesn't approach the CEO in fear.
→ The variable is not the CEO's temper but the emotional place the other person comes from — proof that the avoidance, not the counterparty, is generating the outcome.
Common mistakes
Treating the symptom as the problem
Fixing the argument, the tense team or the missed decision without touching the avoided emotion just regenerates the loop with new content.
Optimising the words instead of the source
Hudson is explicit that the response is not the important thing — it is where the response comes from. A perfectly scripted line delivered from defended shame still lands as a fight.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders and managers with a persistent organisational or relational pattern they cannot explain — conflict avoidance, chronic tension, decision paralysis
Not ideal for
Situations where the problem is genuinely external (a bad market, a broken system) rather than a repeating pattern you are party to
From the transcript
“Every way that we go to avoid a feeling becomes the way that that feeling gets invited towards us.”
“So, whatever emotion that you're trying to avoid, you are inviting into your life in exactly the way that you're trying to avoid it.”
“So, you can backward engineer it to Oh, I don't want to feel ashamed, therefore I'm going to defend myself, which creates the fight, which…”
From the episode
How embracing emotions will accelerate your career
Joe Hudson (executive coach, Art of Accomplishment)