Difficult feeling avoidance strategy

"Rather than learning how to tolerate difficult feelings, many of us have learned only to avoid them...[O]ur inclination is often to run from our emotions because they carry with them the threat of destruction. Indulging ourselves in thinking as a protective alternative, we try to avoid our fear by staying aloof of our feelings." Mark Epstein, in Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart

One sentence captures what I've been struggling to express for many, many months. This sentence slapped me when I read it this morning. I was stunned. To see in such plain terms made it's reality all the more stark. The undercurrent of fear in so many of pursuits, the hint of it that I had spotted last week, was made all the more clear.