Whenever you have the urge to avoid, you need to realize that’s an opportunity to weaken your worries. It’s a chance to practice more mindfulness. Shift your focus away from your thoughts and back to the concrete world.

Trying to push the worries out of your head is inherently problematic because to be vigilant about not thinking about something, your brain needs to keep it in mind. 

Mindfulness does the opposite by making you aware of your state of anxiousness.

• Acceptance: accept that the worries are here and stop trying to make them go away.
• Attention: get out of your thoughts and focus on the world around you.
• Labeling: When a worry pops up, label it as “a worrying thought.” It’s not you. Do not identify with it and don't let it overtake you.

• Catch yourself worrying. 
• Turn your attention to your body and notice sensations you can identify (muscles are tense, heart beating nausea).
• Don’t get involved with your worrisome thoughts. 
• Try to label or name your emotion, whether it’s anxiety, dread, fear, trepidation, anger, irritation, shame, or sadness.
• Tell yourself that it’s okay that you feel what you feel, that your emotion won’t kill you, and try your best to simply let it be there for as long as it’s there.

It’s a technique where you deliberately expose yourself to the thing that is making you anxious.

It helps your brain to figure out which places or people are not actually dangerous and don’t need to be avoided. Once your brain makes that connection, your fear tends to diminish, you stop wanting to avoid things or people, and your life opens up so that you have more freedom to go where you want to go and do what you want to do.