Chollak, in, 2016 PTSD and Experiential AvoidanceExperiential avoidance has been defined by an unwillingness or inability to remain in contact with unwanted private experiences, including unwanted thoughts, emotions, memories, and physiology. This results in attempts to avoid or alter those private experiences. 33 The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ) has been demonstrated to be a valid and reliable measure of experiential avoidance. This questionnaire consists of questions such as “I am afraid of my feelings” and “Emotions cause problems in my life.” 34Studies have found that the use of experiential avoidance results in greater symptomatology and a stronger predictor of symptomatology compared to the severity of previous traumatic events. 35 For example, sexual assault in homosexual men has been found to result in PTSD, with internalized homophobia and experiential avoidance being predictors of symptom severity. Gold and colleagues 36 found that experiential avoidance was the greater predictor of severity compared to internalized homophobia. Experiential avoidance also moderates PTSD severity demonstrated by Shenk and colleagues 37 who found that experiential avoidance moderated the correlation of early life maltreatment and PTSD symptomatology severity.

Avoidance behaviors are simply those actions that individuals dealing with anxiety or panic take to escape distressing experiences or to avoid facing difficult situations, thoughts or feelings.

Thieltges, R. Poulin, in, 2010 The Evolutionary Ecology of AvoidanceAvoidance is only the first line of defence, and natural selection has favored other safeguards in case avoidance fails.

This second line of defence ranges from mechanical and physiological barriers, behavioral defences like grooming and preening, all the way to immunological defenses. We seem to know much more about the function and costs of these postcontact defensive measures, especially immune responses, than we do about avoidance behaviors. Although some behaviors, like nest site selection in birds, have been thoroughly studied using an experimental approach, many other apparently efficient avoidance mechanisms are only supported by anecdotal or circumstantial evidence. These suggest that much of what an animal does is aimed at avoiding parasites, and yet several important questions about the evolution and ecology of parasite avoidance remain unanswered. Most of these questions could be tackled using either an experimental or a comparative approach. What is the actual cost of avoidance behaviors?

How have avoidance behaviors evolved, and were they originally serving a different purpose before being co-opted for defence against parasites? Is the diversity of avoidance behaviors shown by an animal, or the time and energy invested in their expression, roughly proportional to the number of different parasite species, their virulence, or their local abundance, that this animal faces? Many more questions come to mind, but the main one concerns the effectiveness of avoidance behaviors. Clearly, parasites are doing well: some estimates suggest that more than half of living species are parasitic and that all the remaining free-living animals have parasites.

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Within any vertebrate population, it is almost impossible to find a single individual that does not harbor at least some parasites. It is easy to argue that many individuals escape predation and hence that antipredation behaviors must work. But no one escapes parasitism. Still, it may be that antiparasite defences are very efficient and that the average number of parasites per host would be several times higher without these defences.

Sebastian Markett. Martin Reuter, in, 2016 AbstractHarm avoidance is a biologically informed conceptualization of trait anxiety. It reflects the heritable tendency to react strongly to punishment or frustration by inhibiting ongoing behavior. Harm avoidance has been discussed in particular as a risk factor for major depression and anxiety disorders. In order to derive biomarkers for these disorders, it is imperative to understand the neural implementation of harm avoidance in the normal range. In this chapter, we review the personality neuroimaging literature through a harm avoidance lens: a total of 41 empirical studies using different imaging techniques in different modalities are reviewed. Studies point toward a network comprising a frontal, a temporal, and a cingulo-insular complex.

Results provide an ample ground for future research that is needed to derive a full functional model of the neural implementation of harm avoidance. Strict avoidance is typically prescribed to avoid any risk of allergic reaction, although it may not always be necessary. Examples where ingestion of the allergenic protein may be acceptable include raw fruits and vegetables in persons with mild symptoms of pollen-food-related syndrome; extensively heated forms of milk or egg (e.g., bakery goods) in persons who tolerate them, despite reacting to whole forms; and maternal ingestion of allergens when breastfeeding allergic infants who show no evidence of reactions. Patients who tolerate these forms of exposure are identified through their medical history or by medically supervised OFC. Caution is needed because anaphylaxis can occur in some persons. The risk or benefit of allowing exposure to tolerated forms of the allergen should be individualized. There is no evidence that strict food avoidance (compared with less strict avoidance) has an effect on the rate of natural remission.

79 Avoidance of foods that are related and may have cross-reactive proteins can be individualized according to risk of clinical cross-reactivity. Table 12-11 summarizes options for the approach to avoidance of dietary allergens. Cain, in, 2017 AbstractActive avoidance and escape are instrumental learning paradigms where animals, including humans, control exposure to aversive stimuli by emitting active defensive responses. Avoidance and escape are normally adaptive responses that keep organisms safe. These responses can be maladaptive, however, when they interfere with normal function and well-being. The present chapter examines the transition from passive Pavlovian fear reactions to active instrumental actions in aversive situations.

Theoretical issues are discussed and brain mechanisms of avoidance and escape are reviewed. Finally, implications for the development and treatment of pathological anxiety are considered. Zalom, in, 2010 8.9 AvoidanceAvoidance is practiced when pest populations exist in a field or site, but the impact of the pest on the crop can be avoided through some cultural method. Examples of avoidance tactics include crop rotation to break the life cycles of pest species, using trap crops, choosing plant cultivars with maturity dates that may allow harvest before pest populations develop or that have a sufficiently short season to permit planting after conditions are conducive to infestation, fertilization programs to promote rapid crop development, and simply not planting certain fields or areas within fields where damaging pest populations are most likely to develop. Holly Ramsawh. Mellman, in, 2011The anxiety or phobic avoidance is not better accounted for by another mental disorder, such as social phobia (e.g., avoidance is limited to social situations because of fear of embarrassment), specific phobia (e.g., avoidance is limited to a single situation, such as elevators), obsessive–compulsive disorder (e.g., avoidance of dirt in someone with an obsession about contamination), posttraumatic stress disorder (e.g., avoidance of stimuli associated with a severe stressor), or separation anxiety disorder (e.g., avoidance of leaving home or relatives). Tariot, in, 2008 Passive and Active AvoidanceAvoidance tasks require an animal to recognize a cue or context associated with an aversive stimulus and avoid the stimulus either by moving much slower than before the aversive event or freezing and not moving at all (passive avoidance), or actively performing a different behavior (active avoidance).

An example of passive avoidance is the “step-down” paradigm where the animal is placed on an elevated platform next to a shock-grid, such that the animal receives a foot-shock when it steps down from the platform onto the grid. When next placed on the platform, the rat or mouse passively avoids the shock by remaining on the platform for a much longer period of time before stepping down, indicating recollection of the aversive experience. Active avoidance tasks employ operant conditioning, and require that the animal perform behaviors that avoid the aversive stimulus (e.g., pressing a lever to prevent shock or exiting the shock chamber in a shuttle box). Passive avoidance reflects classical conditioning within the context of the step-down paradigm, where latency to respond is increased due to the recollection that foot-shock was previously delivered after stepping onto a floor consisting of metal rods.

185, 186 Much of what we know about memory, including enhancement, consolidation, and retrieval, comes from earlier studies with these paradigms, and many drugs were shown to facilitate performance in these active and passive avoidance tasks. 187 More recently, these paradigms have been used to explore the role of steroids in avoidance memory, and the involvement of arousal as an important feature in encoding memory. Domjan, in, 2008 1.18.2.1.3 Constraints on the conditioning of avoidance learningAvoidance behavior appears to be even more heavily constrained than positively reinforced behavior. The limitations operate both on the types of responses that can be learned to prevent aversive stimulation and the types of stimuli that can serve as cues for avoidance behavior. Rats readily learn to avoid aversive stimulation if the instrumental response is running in a wheel, jumping out of a shock box, or remaining still ( Maatsch, 1959; Bolles, 1969; Brener and Goesling, 1970). However, they have difficultly learning to rear or press a lever to avoid shock ( D’Amato and Schiff, 1964; Bolles, 1969).

Pigeons have a much harder time learning to peck a response key to avoid shock ( Schwartz, 1974) than they have learning to press a treadle ( Foree and LoLordo, 1970).Avoidance procedures typically provide a signal for the impending aversive stimulus, and responding during the signal cancels the scheduled shock and turns off the signal. Auditory cues tend to become conditioned more readily as warning signals than visual cues ( Foree and LoLordo, 1973; Jacobs and LoLordo, 1977), whereas visual cues are more easily conditioned as signals for food. Subsequent research has shown that selective association effects can also be obtained with a single reinforcer (food or shock). In these studies, the stimulus control acquired by the auditory or visual element of a compound stimulus depended on whether the compound signaled the presence or absence of the reinforcer ( Weiss et al., 1993; Panlilio and Weiss, 2005).Initial efforts to understand biological constraints on avoidance learning emphasized the concept of species-specific defense reactions (SSDRs). Bolles (1970, 1971) proposed that, in an aversive situation, the organism’s repertoire is severely limited to a set of instinctive defensive behaviors (SSDRs) that include freezing, fleeing, and aggression. Which of these responses predominates was assumed to depend on environmental factors.

In the absence of an escape route, freezing was presumed to predominate. If there is a potential escape route, fleeing may be the predominant SSDR. Responses such as lever-pressing or key-pecking are never likely to be acquired as avoidance behaviors because they are not related to an SSDR.The SSDR hypothesis was important because it emphasized for the first time that to understand avoidance behavior we first have to consider the instinctive defensive behavioral repertoire of the organism. However, the details of the SSDR hypothesis turned out to be incorrect.

Studies showed that the predominant SSDR for rats was freezing whether or not a prominent escape route was available (see Fanselow and Lester, 1988). These observations led to a reformulation of the SSDR hypothesis that introduced the concept of predatory imminence ( Fanselow and Lester, 1988). This revised theory assumes that which of a range of possible defensive behaviors occurs depends on the perceived imminence of danger or predation. A low level of perceived danger (or predatory imminence) may reduce the amount of time a rat spends foraging but does not generate a targeted defensive action. In contrast, a high level of perceived danger elicits freezing. When the danger (or predator) is actually encountered, a defensive circa strike response is elicited. Differences in how rapidly subjects learn various avoidance responses are explained by reference to timing of expected danger and the instinctive responses that are elicited by a particular level of predatory imminence.

Richardson, Caroline B. Moore, in, 2017 PreventionAvoidance of skin penetration is the best means of preventing chromoblastomycosis, entomophthoromycosis and phaeohyphomycosis. Suitable footwear will help to prevent chromoblastomycosis.Very little is known about the ecology of L. However, the agent is probably introduced directly into the dermis through a penetrating injury, such as a thorn prick or an insect bite, or close, abrasive contact with a dolphin. In areas where infections have been reported it would be advisable to avoid penetrating injuries.The causative agents of mycetoma normally live as saprophytes in the soil. Because the most common site for mycetoma is the foot it is reasonable to assume that the wearing of appropriate footwear would prevent infection. Avoidance of trauma to the hands and other areas is difficult to encourage because most infections seem to be related to outdoor activities.Rhinosporidiosis can be prevented by avoiding eye and nose contact with contaminated dust and water.Occupations that predispose persons to sporotrichosis include gardening, farming, masonry, floral work, outdoor labor and other activities involving exposure to contaminated soil or vegetation such as sphagnum moss or roses.

Wearing gloves and protective clothing while carrying out these activities may therefore prevent traumatic implantation of the fungus through the skin.

Habits of avoidance are maintained by fear of punishing stimulation. You encounter something that hurts, and thereafter, you don't want to encounter that thing again and start avoiding that painful thing, and even things that remind you of that thing. The pain you feel might be physical in nature, or emotional; it doesn't much matter. What matters is that it hurts and you believe you cannot tolerate it; that it will be easier for you to simply avoid experiencing it again than to try to come to grips with it in some other more direct fashion.Agoraphobic people provide a beautiful illustration of this principle. Agoraphobia means 'fear of the market place' when taken literally. It describes a condition some people have where they become so fearful of going out of their homes that they stop doing so, at least when unaccompanied.

Most agoraphobic people suffer from panic attacks, which are frightening and sudden episodes characterized by dramatic physical and emotional symptoms. During a panic attack, people feel like they're having a heart attack, or dying. The experience is terrifying and unpredictable, and so very often, people who have had a panic attack in a particular location come to believe that they can avoid experiencing another attack by avoiding that location in the future. As more attacks occur, they come to avoid more and more locations, until ultimately the only place that feels safe is home.Sometimes the things that people come to avoid are truly dangerous and deserving of being avoided. Other times, there is no actual danger present, or really only minimal actual danger.

In many cases, feelings of anxiety and panic cause people to think they are facing a real and profound danger, when in actuality, they are not. In the case of agoraphobia, the panic attacks feel very dangerous indeed, but they are actually not physically dangerous. The avoidance habit that people get into around their panic attacks is thus out of proportion to the actual threat they pose. You can explain to agoraphobic people that they are overreacting all you like, but this knowledge is unlikely to help them, because there is a natural disconnect between what you know intellectually, and what you know experientially. Panic attacks have to be experienced as not being dangerous before they will stop seeming dangerous to the people who have them. I can relate - Tammy Bachman - May 31st 2008I am very frightened of snakes, yet I have no real reason other than I hate the way they slither.

I just fear them probably more than anything in the world. I will do anything to avoid being exposed to them, whether it be physically or even watching them on TV. However, my son had a Birthday party when he was about 8 years old and we hired a man to come and bring wild animals of all kinds.

He brought a big, bald yellow Phython and I went up to him as he was holding it and stroked this huge snake!!!!! And, I lived through it. Now, I was not brave enough to wrap it around my neck or hold it, but it did make me feel good to get close to it and touch it. I still do pretty much avoid snakes though. Quite honestly, I really do not know how I can ever oversome this fear - it is just too real to me!

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