In today's episode, we wanted to talk about avoidance. Which is something that we touched on in a previous episode, when we were talking about a neighbor of ours who was finding that she was avoiding turning right while she was driving. And so we decided to separate out the topic of avoidance into an episode, all of its own. So what does avoidance mean? And according to the Oxford dictionary, check me out. Is the action of keeping away from, or not doing something. Yeah. And it's that? Isn't it. It's that not doing something? And that something could be anything. It could be absolutely anything. So avoiding things when driving does it matter? Well, I mean, obviously we need to avoid pedestrians or the cars, all of those sorts of things. So that's. That's good. That's a good avoidance. Um, but it might well be a certain junction. Might be on a hill. And it's hard to cross the traffic. It might be a busy roundabout. It might be something that is. Completely different to what you normally do. Yeah. I mean, it might be avoiding driving at certain times or in certain situations, certain weathers or you just don't like that road. Yeah. Do you know, you just there'd be certain roads where you live. That you say? Yeah. I don't drive that road. You know, for whatever reason it is, you're just say, yeah, no too difficult, too hard too. Uh, it's too much could happen. I'd rather just go down this way. Yeah. Let's be clear about this. There are certain things that you can avoid in your driving, and if that doesn't have an impact on you, your journey. Then that can be a choice. Yeah. And choice here. And when we're talking of avoidance, Is, you got to look at the impact it's having on you. Haven't you. Yeah. You know, that choice too. That road is going to make me stressed. That road, this could happen. I don't want to get involved in that. So, what I'm going to do is to relieve my stress. I'm going to go this way. Yeah. Is there a better way or a safer way? Then that can be a choice and that's okay. Now, all the things that I was thinking that might be avoidance, and that might be a choice. Would be, for example, if we've just done an age in drivers course, haven't we. finding out a lot more about, mature drivers and your sort of plans for your driving as you get older. And one of the things that comes up there very often with drivers who are mature in age is that their eyesight it declines, and they may find it more difficult to drive at night. Yep. And this is a biological. Thing. That happens as your eyesight declines, then that glare from lights. It takes much longer for somebody to recover for somebody in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, to recover from that glare of other lies than it takes for somebody who's in their teens or twenties. So that avoiding driving at night as a mature driver. Could be a choice. And that could be a sensible choice, which actually is part of their plan to continue driving. For as long as they want to, to keep them independent. But there is another type of avoidance, which actually. Is less of a choice. And it's where somebody finds the beginning to avoid things. They don't really know why it's not been a conscious decision. It's not been a conscious choice. They've just noticed that they're starting to avoid certain things. They're not sure why, but it's beginning to have an impact is beginning to impact your life is beginning to stop you doing things that you want to do. So potentially. Coming back to our neighbor and not turning right. Would that mean that you wouldn't do certain journeys that you might want to do to go to places, to see people that you want to see to go to work somewhere new? You know, that could be the sorts of impact and the sorts of things that is stopping you from doing now. This isn't a good avoidance. This is a problem. Yeah, and that can be. It can be anything, almost car net where you. In may start off really small as well. You avoiding doing something of whatever. Whatever it is. And then what happens is you don't do it again because you were avoiding to do it and you don't do it again. And you. Do you know what. You don't do it again ever. Yeah. It can become like that. And this is one of those truths around avoidance. So if you avoid doing something, then you start to lose those skills. It's a use it or lose it type situation. So if you're making choices to avoid. Then you're also potentially making the choice to let those skills go. So one of the other things is about avoiding and avoiding again and avoiding again and no longer going back to it is that sometimes this can become a bit of a sneaky spiral. So if you've got one junction that you avoid, because actually you found a better, safer route that stops you from feeling anxious. Great. If that one junction or that one roundabout or that one situation turns into adding another one on. And another one on and another one on, then you. Ending up in this sort of like, Slowly decreasing circle this spiraling situation where you keep adding on. Extra things that you're avoiding. Now, this is making your world smaller and smaller and smaller.