Joe makes a precise clarification: we don’t invite what we fear by moving toward it — we invite it through the avoidance of it. The mechanism operates through two channels.
First, direct behavioral invitation. Joe’s daughter, afraid of being abandoned by a new boyfriend, sought reassurance — which came across as needy, making abandonment more likely. Joe in his twenties, scared of abandonment, got angry or avoidant — both behaviors that pushed people away. The avoidance of the feared emotion drives behavior that creates the feared reality.
“The things that we fear, we invite through the avoidance of the things that we fear.”
Second, confirmation bias. Once we’ve made a decision while avoiding a feared emotion, we construct stories that blind us to reality. Joe’s daughter was defending her boyfriend too vigorously — justifying, not seeing clearly — because seeing clearly might mean feeling the hurt she was avoiding. This creates blind spots that walk us right into the outcome we feared.
The antidote is welcoming the feared emotion directly. If you can take or leave someone — if you can sit with the fear of abandonment without acting on it — you become self-possessed. And self-possessed people are harder to leave, harder to exploit, and make clearer decisions.
Related Concepts
- Resistance creates the feared outcome
- Neediness repels what you want
- Self-possessed presence transforms relationships
- Resisting an emotion is exactly what invites it back
- We recreate painful circumstances to finally welcome the avoided emotion
- Fully falling in love with the avoided feeling is the quickest way to stop a negative pattern
- Guilt is inherited fear in disguise
- Resisting fear doesn’t eliminate it — it leaks out sideways