Postponing Barbie
on avoidance, value-driven decisions, and fall term in #HigherEd
I recently decided to take a pass on heading to the theater to watch Barbie. Initially, my contrary nature was at play here. Generally speaking, if everyone is doing something, I’ll pass. But then my 14yo son kept casually mentioning that he wouldn’t mind seeing it, and I was reading rave reviews, so I thought, why not? We had planned to go this week. But leading up to our mom-son movie date, I started noticing posts online from women saying that Barbie had emotionally wrecked them. One woman I follow on Instagram wrote that she was “hysterically crying” as the credits rolled.
As I continue to heal from a bad bout of anxiety (thank you modern medicine), I started to question my decision. Why set myself up for overwhelm? I could instead wait a few months and watch from home, giving me the option to take breaks, have my own snacks, pause to use the bathroom, and cozy up with my favorite blanket while watching. I don’t need to see Barbie to feel anguish about the state of our world. I don’t need to see Barbie to long for, to imagine, and to work to create a better one.
My decision to take a rain check on Barbie got me thinking about how to tell the difference between avoiding something in a maladaptive way and choosing to honor our needs and sensitivities in an adaptive way. I’ve learned over the past year that generally speaking, avoidance makes anxiety worse. Last summer, we turned the car around on our way to our summer vacation because of my anxiety. At the time, it felt like the right decision. But over time, not so much. I was anxious for the next year about this year’s vacation, worried that history would repeat itself. The short-term fix led to long-term problems.
But sometimes, avoidance is a smart choice. A few years ago, I was describing the sick feeling I’d get in my stomach when watching my (formerly) favorite show, Law and Order: SVU, to my therapist.
“Stop watching that show,” she said.
“But it’s a great show, and I love the main character,” I pleaded.
“Stop watching that show,” she repeated.
I took her advice, and while I sometimes miss the trials and tribulations of Olivia Benson and her team, I respect my need to not inject trauma into my already trauma-sensitive brain.
So how do we know when avoidance is healthy or harmful?
What I’ve come to realize this week is that the answer to this question lies in our values. Many therapeutic schools center values as the core of all healing. When we learn to make choices from our values, rather than our fears and outdated habits, we heal and thrive. This doesn’t promise us a pain-free life, but it does help us create a life of meaning.
In the case of the missed vacation, turning around felt good in the moment, but ultimately staying the course would’ve been more closely aligned with my values. In the case of the Barbie movie, not so much. It’s a movie. A great movie, I’m sure. An important movie, it seems. But it’s also a movie I’ll be able to watch in a few months at home, in a space where I can more mindfully process the emotions it elicits.
My core values are health, family, creativity, and learning. There are lots of other values that I could add to that list, but these are the top four that guide me. When I get lost in questions about whether to keep driving or turn around, I ask myself which choice aligns most closely with my values.
All of this got me thinking about conversations we’ve been having in #HigherEd about students’ mental health, anxiety, and avoidance. Is a student opting to skip class because of anxiety practicing healthy or maladaptive avoidance?
The thing is, only that student can answer that question. And the answer depends on their values. We can never, not ever, answer it for them.
But Karen, you protest. If they’ve enrolled in college, that means they must value their education, and if they value their education, they have to attend class!
Maybe (dare I say it?) the student does value education, but what they’re getting out of your course or their courses in general doesn’t line up with what they want from their education. Maybe they are seeking meaning and purpose and what your institution is offering them is an education in how to be a compliant worker bee. Maybe they want an education that speaks to the climate crisis and helps them to take action to fight it and yet they haven’t heard a peep about climate action since they set foot on your campus, a campus built in part by an investment in fossil fuel companies. Rather than shaming students for avoiding class or acting as if that’s an individual problem, what if we instead focused on creating classes that draw students in, anxious or calm, hopeful or terrified?
And of course, maybe that student’s anxiety is severe, and they are simply unable to attend class that day (or could attend virtually instead). There is not one “anxiety” that hits everyone in the same way. There is no study that shows that avoidance exacerbates 100% of people’s anxiety 100% of the time. Research always speaks in probabilities. It is up to that student, first and foremost, perhaps in consultation with their medical care team, to decide what they need in that moment. We’re not them. We’re not their doctors. We can be compassionate witnesses to whatever choices our students make, but it is never our place to decide for them.
Practically speaking, what does this mean for educators? I think it means that we keep doing what I hope we’ve been doing, which is to remember that college students are not a monolith and people with anxiety disorders aren’t either. I think it means that we remember our scope of practice: that we are educators, not therapists. I think it means that we do our best to create courses and campuses ripe with meaning and purpose, that help our students (and ourselves) fulfill their value of meeting the urgent needs of this moment in human history.
