"People think they will be happy if they move to another place, and then it turns out that wherever you go, you take yourself with you" Quite famous and very accurate quote from Neil Gaiman's book, we can go to another country or even another continent, to escape from a boring routine or a disgusted partner, but we always take ourselves. With your traumas, life experiences, needs. What does the need to escape from oneself indicate and what is behind it? What we avoid and why Psychological science pays a lot of attention to avoidance and explains this behavior with evolutionary theory. When a state of anxiety or fear arises, strong emotions overwhelm us, and our ancestors in such situations ran away from the source of fear. And now it is very unpleasant for a modern person to experience anxiety: our hearts race, our breathing quickens, sometimes we feel sick, we feel helpless and vulnerable. To be in this state for a long time is unpleasant, to put it mildly, and the natural reaction is to run away. And our psyche does everything possible to avoid encountering a difficult feeling. Karen Horney identified 4 ways to avoid anxiety: Rationalization - turning an abstract feeling of anxiety into objective fear. And then escaping from anxiety becomes a way to avoid responsibility for a difficult emotional state that is difficult to control. Repressing anxiety is an artificial (conscious or unconscious) overcoming of anxiety, an attempt to remove an uncomfortable feeling from consciousness. Addictions - use of alcohol or psychoactive substances, workaholism, sexaholism . These abuses are an attempt to reduce anxiety, which is difficult to tolerate. Avoidance of the cause of anxiety - situations, feelings, thoughts that give rise to an unpleasant feeling. Sometimes a person does this unconsciously. How to understand that you are running away from yourself There are some indirect signs that you are avoiding your desires and needs. They are easier to notice than the destructive pattern as a whole. So, you are trying to escape from yourself if: You want to go far away. As a rule, this is moving from the country with a radical change in lifestyle. It may seem to us that in another place with other people we will become happier and more successful. But in fact, if a person was not successful in his native country, then he is unlikely to build a brilliant career in a more developed country. The stars shine for those who managed to find themselves in their native land. For them, an economically developed country can become a step up. The rest will continue to eke out a living, simply buying them for dollars rather than rubles. You spend a lot of time outside of reality. This could be going online (games, chats, social networks), binge reading fiction books, or becoming interested in the world of cinema. All this does not help to get in touch with reality and notice oneself in it. And if it’s more interesting there than in real life, this is an alarm bell. You spin like a squirrel in a wheel. Isn’t your life like an endless Groundhog Day: got up, drank coffee, went to work, picked up the children from kindergarten, had dinner with the family, went to bed? And so in a circle for many years. Why do you go to work? Do you really want to save money for a larger apartment or do you want to travel more? There may not be answers to these questions, because there is no time to ask yourself them - you need to constantly turn the wheel. And then I, as a psychologist, would like to ask you a question: what will happen if you stop? What will you see if your life is not blurry from perpetual motion, but clearly focused? Will you be happy with what will open up or is it precisely from him that you are running away? You feel bad alone with yourself. When we are left alone, we are faced with the real ourselves, we hear our inner voice. For some, the worst thing can be being in silence. You may have noticed that some people, while at home or in the car, immediately turn on the radio or TV. This helps to avoid confronting yourself and the fear of two global problems: unpreparedness for introspection (I’m not talking about self-criticism, but about constructive!